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

corruption have direct, indirect or remote impacts on rights. 14 Much can also
be learned from environmental impact assessments (see Box 4) and some
processes developed to enable effective participation by indigenous groups. 15
The point to make is that the matter of who needs to be involved, as well as how
they should be involved, is critical to the quality of any participatory process.
Once groups exposed to particular risk have been identified, the following
principles provide the core elements of a genuinely inclusive approach:
▪ Groups affected by a decision (and the public at large) must be notified in
advance, in good time to enable them to prepare and communicate their views.
▪ Groups must have access to information about the consultation process.
This should be complete, up-to-date, truthful and understandable (avoiding
technical language).
▪ They must be actively supported to participate. Steps should be taken to
assist groups that have limited literacy, or face linguistic, cultural, geographic
or economic barriers to participation. The process should be designed to
enable groups to exercise their rights.
▪ They must have opportunities, freely and without interference, to convene
their members or representatives, to evaluate the process and assess the
advantages and disadvantages of the decision in question.
▪ They must have opportunities to make their concerns and opinions known.
The process should ensure that their opinions are given proper consideration
and weight.
14 To illustrate, bribing a judge directly violates the right to a fair trial. When an official
corruptly issues a permit that allows toxic waste to be dumped illegally, this may
not violate a right, but if a local community is subsequently poisoned, the corrupt
act indirectly causes a violation of their right to the highest attainable standard of
health. A remote connection would occur where police violate rights when arresting
demonstrators in the course of social unrest that has been triggered partly by electoral
corruption: the electoral corruption directly violates the right to political participation,
but it is only distantly linked to the violations that occur when the arrests are made.
See Corruption and Human Rights: Making the Connection, ICHRP, 2009.
15 The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted 2007) includes
several articles regarding participation and consultation, as does ILO Convention
169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries. See also the
2009 Anchorage Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate
Change and the work of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, for
example, the Report of the International Expert Group Meeting on the Millennium
Development Goals, Indigenous Participation and Good Governance, 2006.
In the application of ILO Convention 169, several cases at national tribunals have
considered the non-participation of indigenous groups in consultation or decisionmaking
processes to invalidate government project approvals, especially in the
mining, forestry and energy sectors. A recent example is the ruling of Peru’s
Constitutional Tribunal against the Ministry of Energy and Mines (case 05427-
2009-PC/TC) that the executive branch is not fully complying with the Convention
obligation to consult with indigenous peoples before approving projects.
Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda: Challenges, Possibilities and Opportunities