Addis Ababa, 26th June 2025
On Thursday the 26th of June 2025, Ethiopia officially endorsed a pioneering set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Financial Investigation in Cases of Trafficking in Persons (TiP) and Smuggling of Migrants (SoM): first of its kind in the Horn of Africa region. Developed by the Ministry of Justice, Ethiopian Federal Police, and the Financial Intelligence Service, these SOPs represent an important step forward in the country’s and region’s collective efforts to combat organised trafficking networks by focusing on the financial dimension of these crimes.
Human trafficking and migrant smuggling are driven largely by profit. Yet financial investigations are often underused and come to late in many cases. The new SOPs place financial investigation at the centre of anti-TiP and SoM efforts . They focus on tracing illicit money flows, identifying and freezing criminal assets, supporting parallel prosecutions for money laundering, and enabling recovery of proceeds or their equivalent value.
The SOPs were developed through a multi-agency process led by a national Task Force and supported by the Secretariat of the National Partnership Coalition on Migration. They are grounded in Ethiopia’s existing legal and institutional frameworks and reflect national experience in asset recovery and criminal investigation while aligning with international standards, tools, and best practices. They expand on financial investigation guidelines included in earlier SOPs for Investigating and Prosecuting TiP and SoM, developed with the support of BMM and officially endorsed in 2021.
These new SOPs are designed for use by financial analysts, police investigators, asset recovery specialists, and prosecutors. They provide step-by-step guidance for integrating financial analysis into criminal casework, coordinating inter-agency action, and linking financial trails to the broader criminal networks involved.
This initiative is part of the Better Migration Management (BMM) Programme, funded by the European Union (EU) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). CIVIPOL provided technical support throughout the drafting process, including capacity-building and legal advisory support.
Training materials and an implementation plan accompany the SOPs t help institutions adopt and apply them in practice. This development complements ongoing efforts across the region to harmonise responses to TiP and SoM.
With this launch, Ethiopia strengthens its role in leading a coordinated, intelligence-driven approach to combating human trafficking and migrant smuggling, ensuring that perpetrators face justice, lose their illicit profits, and that recovered assets can help support victims and provide compensation.
