Focus Area

Each year, billions of dollars are stolen, laundered, and hidden from governments and communities around the world. At the global level, a shadow financial system allows for the obscuring of accountability and ownership, of tax rights and duties and hides crime and conflict-fueling finances. Corruption, illicit financial flows, money laundering, embezzlement, and financial secrecy all contribute to a severe drain on development financing, and they help drive mistrust, inequality, and the abuse of power. This impact negatively on public service delivery and creates significant obstacles to the Sustainable Development Agenda’s leave no one behind promise.

Financial integrity is about ensuring that the financial system operates in a clean, transparent, and accountable way. That economic and financial activities are conducted in line with the legitimate financial rules and standards and that these are contributing to sustainable development. Strengthening financial integrity is about governance and systems transformation – working with the system of values, policies and institutions by which society manages its economic, political and social affairs. It entails navigating the political economy of change, strengthening institutions, and supporting state, civil society, and private sector actors to collaborate around change.

UNDP’s Global Policy Center for Governance works to strengthen financial integrity at the global and national levels. Achieving financial integrity for sustainable development requires greater transparency, stronger institutions, enhanced accountability, and more cooperation at the national, regional and global levels. We support this through close collaboration with a range of partners, developing new research and knowledge, and deploying innovative methodologies to convene change agents, develop capacity and support policy change.

The Center currently runs two initiatives on issues of financial integrity: Finance, Integrity and Governance (FIG): In the lead-up to the fourth Financing for Development Conference (FfD4) in 2025, the FIG initiative facilitates constructive policy dialogue on financial integrity and governance issues in the context of Financing for Development, as a ‘knowledge track’ separate from but in support of member states’ negotiations. It does so through three in-person multi-stakeholder policy symposia between mid 2024 and early 2025 and through supporting policy papers. The initiative is funded by Norway and is implemented in close collaboration with UNDESA. Action on Transnational Corruption (ATAC): This initiative seeks to develop a radically different approach to understanding, connecting, and tackling transnational corruption collectively and more effectively. ATAC deploys systems thinking and complexity-grounded methods specifically designed to deal with complex problems. Working with a broad coalition of stakeholders across the globe, the initiative seeks to help improve our understanding of transnational corruption and surface opportunities for tackling it. The initiative is funded by the MacArthur Foundation.