Corruption and Development - pogar

The Governance Model asserts that corruption affects
poverty by influencing governance factors, which, in
turn, impact poverty levels. First, corruption reduces
governance capacity — it weakens political
institutions and citizen participation and leads to
lower quality government services and
infrastructure. Corruption erodes the institutional
capacity of government to deliver quality public
services, diverts public investment away from major
public needs into capital projects, and lowers
compliance with safety and health regulations, thus
worsening poverty.
2.3. Corruption and human rights
The right to a society free of corruption is inherently
a basic human right because the right to life,
dignity, equality and other important human rights
and values depend significantly upon this right. Thus,
fighting corruption and protecting human rights are
inextricably linked. When the government of a
country fails to curb or contain corruption, it also fails
to fulfill its obligation to promote and protect the
human rights of its citizens.
The prevalence of corruption creates discrimination
in access to public services in favor of those able to
influence authorities to act in their personal
interest. The Serbian health sector, which is
considered to be one of the most corrupt sectors in
Serbia, is rife with corrupt practices such as
discriminating against patients based on their
income and their contacts with the medical
profession (International Federation for Human
Rights 2005).
Similarly, corrupt judicial systems are proven to
violate the basic right to equality before the law and
deny procedural rights guaranteed by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and other international
human rights conventions. Thus, corruption is a major
obstacle to fulfilling a state’s obligation to protect
and promote the right of people to have full and fair
access to human rights such as social services and to
the judicial system (Jayawickrama 2006).
The Declaration on the Right to Development
adopted by UN General Assembly resolution 41/128
of 4 December 1986 states that ‘the right to
development is an inalienable human right by virtue
of which every human person and all peoples are
entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy
economic, social, cultural and political development,
in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms
can be fully realized’. By preventing the full
realization of economic, political and social rights, a
corrupt governance system directly contradicts the
right to development in this declaration.
Corrupt political systems also deny the fundamental
right to democratic participation by obstructing civil
and political rights. For example, the self-censorship
of the press, induced by corrupt practices, may
infringe upon the right to freedom of expression.
Similarly, corruption in an electoral process, such as
vote buying, can deny the right to vote.
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