Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda - The ICHRP

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This report examines how the use of a human rights framework can strengthen and enhance anti-corruption strategies. It sets out this case in four sections. The first section discusses the principles of participation, transparency and access to information, and accountability. These values are important to human rights and anti-corruption advocates, and the report examines how a human rights understanding of these principles can enhance anti-corruption strategies. The second section focuses on four areas in which human rights can have a specific impact on the global anti-corruption agenda: (1) measurement of corruption, (2) public procurement, (3) political finance and (4) social service provision. In doing so, the report explores how the use of human rights standards and tools can increase the impact of traditional anti-corruption approaches. The third section discusses the impact of corruption on women and the value of adopting a gender strategy, recognising that corruption disproportionately affects vulnerable and disadvantaged women. The fourth section discusses the alleged tensions between anti-corruption and human rights and concludes that problems are confined to certain anticorruption investigation and prosecution procedures and that these are absent from anti-corruption law enforcement in most states. A final section sums up the main arguments and conclusions. Throughout, the report gives particular attention to the impact of corruption on disadvantaged and disempowered groups such as indigenous peoples, afrodescendent peoples, migrant workers, persons with disabilities, those with HIV/ AIDS, refugees, and (in broader terms) all those who are poor. Often, these groups are excluded from full participation in public debates and discussions and from access to social policies and services. In many cases, the same groups of people also suffer discrimination against them, by reason of their race, gender, class, or sexuality or on other grounds. As noted, the report pays particular attention to women, because they are often victims of multiple and interconnected forms of discrimination. Human rights norms and principles can contribute to anti-corruption strategies principally because human rights address abuses of power, and corruption is essentially an abuse of power. To design effective anti-corruption policies, therefore, it is necessary to understand how power is socially organised. Corruption is a profoundly social activity, shaped by cultural notions of power, privilege and social status. For this reason, anti-corruption policies should not treat corruption as if it were composed of isolated and opportunistic acts of selfishness. It is, rather, a social expression of power that permits certain people For a better and deeper understanding of marginalisation, see Young, 2000. viii Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda: Challenges, Possibilities and Opportunities
(primarily government officials and business leaders) to control and oppress others economically, politically and culturally. In such social environments, structural corruption is closely associated with structural violence, a notion that describes forms of oppression that deny disadvantaged groups equal access to land, jobs, education, medical facilities, family planning and housing. In settings where unequal social relationships are entrenched, corrupt private interests can capture the state, using their influence to shape regulations, laws, decrees and judicial rulings and consolidating it further via pervasive clientelistic networks that make access to career opportunities, social benefits and employment contingent on complicity and obedient service. Capture of the state allows a restricted group of insiders to control political processes of election and appointment and to regulate state–market relations in ways that advance their own economic and personal interests by distributing public resources and services in a discriminatory manner. Viewed from this perspective, corruption tends to sustain and reproduce the exploitation and social exclusion of people and to impede the exercise of their human rights. A human rights analysis throws light on the power relations in a society because it pays particular attention to discrimination, equity and the removal of economic, legal and political obstacles that prevent marginalised groups from enjoying their rights. As a result, a human rights analysis can contribute directly to the design and implementation of anti-corruption policies. For the link between corruption and structural violence, see Iadicola and Shupe, 2003. See Kaufmann et al., 2000. Much of the analysis of structural corruption in this report is based on Johan Galtung’s concept of structural violence. On this view, corruption is almost always invisible, embedded in ubiquitous social structures and normalised by stable institutions and regular experience. Thus, corrupt practices are part of the routine behaviour of society. See Galtung, 1969; and Winter and Leighton, 2001. Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda: Challenges, Possibilities and Opportunities ix
Page 1 and 2: Integrating Human Rights in the Ant
Page 7 and 8: Contents Acknowledgements Foreword
Page 9 and 10: Acronyms ACHPR ACHR AIL ALAC CAT CC
Page 11 and 12: Acknowledgements The International
Page 13 and 14: Foreword Corruption seriously disto
Page 15 and 16: Background In 2007, the ICHRP set o
Page 17: Introduction Power, Corruption and
Page 21 and 22: I. Renewing Anti-Corruption Princip
Page 23 and 24: Box 2. The Principle of Non-Discrim
Page 25 and 26: of several key rights. To participa
Page 27 and 28: corruption have direct, indirect or
Page 29 and 30: Criteria for evaluating the depth o
Page 31 and 32: Power and Participation In practice
Page 33 and 34: Recommendations ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Page 35 and 36: Box 4. Useful Guidelines on Public
Page 37 and 38: a justification when, for any reaso
Page 39 and 40: Between 1946 and 2009, more than 80
Page 41 and 42: accessible provision of information
Page 43 and 44: Box 6. Enhancing Upward Accountabil
Page 45 and 46: Recommendations ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ Par
Page 47 and 48: human rights, resources and account
Page 49 and 50: Social Accountability: New Forms of
Page 51 and 52: Box 9. Collective Action for the Ri
Page 53 and 54: Each of these cases combines formal
Page 55 and 56: esponsibility to protect the rights
Page 57 and 58: to prepare and make effective use o
Page 59 and 60: freedom of association and the righ
Page 61 and 62: II. Human Rights and Specific Issue
Page 63 and 64: lead anti-corruption organisations
Page 65 and 66: Fourth, adding human rights to the
Page 67 and 68: Seen from this perspective, corrupt
Page 69 and 70:
Box 16. The Right to Political Part
Page 71 and 72:
that anti-corruption advocates coul
Page 73 and 74:
Recommendations Measuring Corruptio
Page 75 and 76:
III. The Gender Perspective Early a
Page 77 and 78:
Box 19. Gender Mainstreaming Framew
Page 79 and 80:
The Need for Gender Sensitivity in
Page 81:
Recommendations ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ Whe
Page 84 and 85:
Although this chapter examines thes
Page 86 and 87:
the prosecution to prove the facts
Page 88 and 89:
Special investigative techniques ar
Page 91 and 92:
Conclusions The report has included
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Selected Bibliography Ackerman, Bru
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Cornwall, Andrea. Beneficiary, Cons
Page 97 and 98:
International Budget Partnership. O
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Svampa, Maristella and Sebastian Pe
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World Bank. Assessing aid: what wor
Page 103 and 104:
About the Council The International
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Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda - The ICHRP

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