Under the United Nations Development Account on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, provided a series of technical assistance on the statistical measurement of SDG indicator 16.4.1 in Burkina Faso in 2021 and 2022. Key activities included identifying bilateral trade gaps that merit further investigation through the Illicit Financial Flows statistical measurement methods.
Following the successful implementation of the United Nations Development Account on Illicit Financial Flows, the Government of Burkina Faso officially requested UNCTAD to support the country to build and strengthen the capacity of national experts on applied research strategies to measure Illicit Financial Flows in the extractive sector. In response to the country’s request, UNCTAD is coordinating a series of hybrid workshops on Illicit Financial Flows in the extractive sector, with the workshop on 23 February 2023 on IFF risk in the gold sector being the third workshop. The main objective of this project is to contribute to Burkina Faso’s efforts in building up skills and research knowledge on curbing IFFs in the extractive industries and to mitigate terrorism financing risks.
The country is currently working on the data collection process. This third hybrid workshop will provide best practices and lessons learned, from various country cases, on techniques for collecting data from IFFs in the extractive sector, the actors from whom the data must be collected, and the analysis techniques in order to avoid misinterpretations. This workshop aims to reduce the IFFs, improve revenue collection from extractive resources, reduce insecurity related to extractive resources, and improve socio-economic outcomes for the population.
Participants include:
- National Anti-Fraud Gold Brigade
- General Directorate of Mines and Geology
- National agency supervising artisanal and semi-mechanized operations
- Permanent Secretariat of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
- National Corporation of Craftsmen and Operators of Small Mines of Burkina
- Mines Inspectorate
- Directorate General of Taxes
- Directorate General of Customs
- Directorate General of Treasury and Public Accounting
- Gendarmerie Staff
- General Inspectorate of Finance
- Directorate General of the National Police
- National Financial Information Processing Unit
- National Institute of Statistics and Demography
