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

Seen from this perspective, corruption in political finance violates or undermines
respect for human rights. When voters are forced to sell their votes, corruption
violates the freedom of expression and the freedom to vote in free and fair elections.
The fairness of the electoral process is further undermined when the electoral
outcome is defined by access to resources rather than policies. When some voters
influence the elections more than others because they can offer bribes, this directly
violates the principle of one person one vote and discriminates against the poor.
In addition, political corruption has an indirect impact on social and economic
rights because it distorts public policy-making. Laws are adjusted to favour
certain groups, corrupt interests receive privileged treatment when they bid
for contracts, pay taxes or violate labour laws. Politicians turn a blind eye to
environmental harms. In consequence, on a different scale, public policies
meet the needs of a secretly privileged elite.
Reform efforts in this area have so far focused on establishing rules that prevent
political parties from accepting money that will compromise the integrity of policymaking.
In many cases, the emphasis is on capping political contributions and
expenditure. In some instances, countries publicly subsidise elections in order
to diminish the influence of private money. Other reforms have supported and
enhanced the monitoring and enforcement roles of electoral courts or agencies,
or regulated access to the media. In recent years, reformers of political finance
have also sought to enhance political accountability and transparency by
strengthening citizen and state oversight.
In support of transparency, some anti-corruption organisations have implemented
vertical accountability strategies to control party and candidate funding in election
campaigns and to raise awareness about the need to regulate political financing.
For example, the Crinis Project, a joint project of Transparency International
and the Carter Center, compared the transparency of political financing in eight
countries in Latin America using qualitative and quantitative indicators. 58
While these efforts have certainly put the issue of electoral financing and reform of
political finance law on the agenda, electoral corruption continues to be an obstinate
problem in both developed and developing countries. Adding human rights
considerations to anti-corruption approaches could address some of the challenges
by providing development agencies, parliamentarians, activists and other actors with
additional arguments and refocusing and expanding the scope of reform efforts.
A further challenge is that the focus on transparency and accountability has
concentrated attention on the need for horizontal and vertical accountability, but
has not successfully resolved the problem that in most societies access to political
participation – whether as candidate or voter – is highly unequal. Adding a human
rights focus to anti-corruption programmes in this area might cause organisations
58 Transparency International and the Carter Center, 2007.
Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda: Challenges, Possibilities and Opportunities 47