Annual report

Annual Overview 
| About the IFRC 
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for good governance, accountability, transpar-
ency, and probity to its stakeholders. 
This function is an independent and objective 
assurance and investigation function that adds 
value to and helps enhance the operation of the 
global network. It helps the organization accom-
plish its objectives by bringing a systematic, 
disciplined approach to evaluate and improve 
the effectiveness of governance, risk manage-
ment, and control processes. 
Through this function, the Secretary General 
is provided with the necessary independent 
assurance over IFRC’s governance, risk manage-
ment, and control frameworks to discharge his 
accountability and integrity responsibilities to the 
Governing Board and more widely to the IFRC’s 
partners and supporters, including donors. 
There are three elements in this area of work: 
Internal Audit; coordination of External Audits, 
and Investigations. The IFRC has adopted 
the Global Institute of Internal Auditors’ 
International Standards for its audit work and 
the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners 
(ACFE) and Core Humanitarian Standards for its 
investigations into fraud and sexual exploita-
tions, abuse and harassment (SEAH). These 
Standards set out best practice in internal audit 
and investigations globally.
The work done involves close engagement with 
partners, including quarterly briefings to donors, 
National Societies, and diplomatic missions on 
the prevention of fraud and misconduct. In 
2022, work began to develop an integrated and 
comprehensive new risk management system 
that supports the management of risk alongside 
the exploration of opportunities. This work 
encourages a culture of risk-informed decision 
making, accountability and transparency in all 
IFRC offices.
In 2022, the results of an external quality 
assessment were used to refine IFRC’s internal 
audit and investigation approaches. Enhanced 
audit and investigation services have allowed 
the organization to quickly respond and sup-
port the IFRC’s billion Swiss francs response 
in Ukraine. This included providing immediate 
risk assessment and integrity services to the 
response, implementing third party oversight of 
the cash transfer programmes, and embedded 
a dedicated audit and investigation team within 
the response, greatly increasing the assurance 
IFRC can provide. 
Demand for the department’s services continued 
to rise after the enhancement of whistleblowing 
systems and the IFRC’s leadership’s continued 
vocal support for integrity. Several significant 
and complex fraud and SEAH investigations 
took place, resulting in an unprecedented level 
of integrity sanctions being applied. 
Dedicated resources and tools for the devel-
opment of effective fraud prevention and 
prevention of SEAH were shared across the 
IFRC network in 2022, focusing on enhancing 
the membership’s integrity reporting systems 
and employee awareness. Integrity-related 
training was provided to more than 500 IFRC and 
National Society staff and the Whistleblowing 
Prevention System “Integrity Line” was rolled 
out in conjunction with corresponding training 
across 14 National Societies.
Risk management remains an increasingly 
important part of the humanitarian process - for 
the IFRC’s partners and donors, and also for the 
IFRC itself. To this end, in 2022 the organization 
worked with partners to align and improve the 
respective processes for risk management and 
risk reporting, with a view to integrating and 
strengthening these systems while still allowing 
opportunities to be explored and acted upon in 
an agile and risk-informed manner.
The need for this work emerged from the IFRC’s 
response to COVID-19. The pandemic disrupted 
the international humanitarian sector and 
demanded entirely new approaches almost 
overnight, many with a level of risk involved. It 
was clear that a fully integrated and compre-
hensive risk management system was required 
across the global IFRC, to embed a culture of 
risk-informed decision making, accountability 
and transparency in all offices worldwide.