Doha Declaration 2025 signals a global shift to AI-driven anti-corruption cooperation
On 19 December in Doha, States agreed on a clear direction for the next decade of anti-corruption work: combine responsible artificial intelligence with deeper international cooperation. The Doha Declaration 2025 puts technology and collaboration at the center of enforcement, policy, and prevention.
For legal teams, this is a mandate to modernize. Corruption cases increasingly cross borders, exploit digital systems, and move money at speed. Traditional tools struggle to keep up without secure data-sharing, analytics, and structured safeguards.
What the Declaration commits to
- Use AI and digital tools to detect suspicious financial patterns, assess procurement risk, and support faster cross-border action.
- Build secure platforms for real-time information exchange, including through expert networks such as the UNODC-supported GlobE Network.
- Embed technology within strong governance: legality, transparency, human rights protections, and accountable oversight.
- Advance international cooperation for complex, transnational corruption cases, with fewer delays and clearer data access.
- Strengthen peer review under the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) to keep reforms measurable and on track.
- Engage youth as active contributors to policy and oversight, not symbolic participants.
- Deepen public-private partnerships through the new COSP Private Sector Platform co-led by UNODC and the UN Global Compact.
Why this matters for legal professionals
AI is moving from pilot projects to core infrastructure in investigations and compliance. The Declaration recognizes both its utility and its risks, and places accountability on how it is used. Legal practitioners will need to translate these commitments into enforceable policies, contracts, and case strategies.
- Update the legal basis for AI use in investigations and procurement (statutory authority, due process, proportionality).
- Set admissibility standards for AI-assisted leads: documentation, reproducibility, expert validation, and chain-of-custody.
- Draft procurement clauses covering algorithmic transparency, audit rights, bias testing, and data protection.
- Prepare for faster cross-border requests: interoperable formats, clear gateways, and secure channels for e-evidence.
- Mandate algorithmic impact assessments and periodic human review for high-stakes decisions.
- Tighten controls around beneficial ownership, politically exposed persons, and sanctions screening.
- Reinforce whistleblower protections and safe reporting channels integrated with analytics.
Technology with guardrails
The Declaration is explicit: technology is useful, not a cure-all. Risks include misuse, bias, and opaque decision-making. Systems must be explainable where rights are affected, documented for audit, and supervised by competent authorities.
That means clear policies on data sources, model training, retention, and access. Build red-teaming into deployments. Keep a litigation-ready paper trail: who did what, when, why, and with which tool.
Cooperation is getting faster
Timely information sharing is decisive in corruption cases. Delays let suspects move assets or erase evidence. The Declaration promotes expert networks and secure platforms to close those gaps, notably the UNODC GlobE Network for anti-corruption authorities.
Peer review remains a workhorse. Since 2010, the UNCAC Implementation Review Mechanism has supported 146 countries in updating or introducing laws and policies. The next review phase seeks procedures that are efficient and fit for purpose.
Private sector and youth are part of the solution
The new COSP Private Sector Platform gives companies a formal role in UNCAC implementation. Expect stronger expectations on supply-chain integrity, third-party risk, and beneficial ownership disclosure.
Youth engagement moved from rhetoric to request. Representatives urged governments to seat young people where decisions are made, with influence, resources, and measurable outcomes in education and civic integrity.
What to do in the next six months
- Inventory all AI and analytics used in investigations, procurement, and compliance; fix gaps in legality, notice, and oversight.
- Adopt AI procurement terms: testing protocols, model updates, incident reporting, termination rights, and audit cooperation.
- Standardize evidence handling for AI outputs: logs, versioning, reproducibility, and expert affidavits.
- Set cross-border playbooks with central authorities: templates for requests, data formats, and secure transfer channels.
- Join or engage with the GlobE Network and map points of contact for rapid cooperation.
- Run bias and performance testing on high-impact use cases (procurement scoring, risk flags) and publish summaries where permitted.
- Tighten controls on high-risk vendors and intermediaries; verify beneficial ownership at onboarding and on trigger events.
- Train investigators, prosecutors, and compliance officers on AI literacy and evidentiary standards.
Leadership signals
UNODC's Acting Executive Director John Brandolino highlighted that putting AI to work-responsibly-can meaningfully strengthen prevention and enforcement. COSP also adopted eleven resolutions, including on political finance transparency, integrity education for children and young people, and the links between corruption, migrant smuggling, and environmental crime.
COSP12 will be held in Uzbekistan. Between now and then, credibility hinges on delivery: better cooperation times, cleaner procurement, and cases that hold up in court.
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