May 14, 2022
Technical Staff

Corruption affects the world’s poorest people, whether through direct infringement of human rights or the depletion of public funds, resulting in shaky infrastructure and an insufficient supply of public goods and services. However, there is a need to direct more resources and efforts towards studying and researching the relationships between the fight against corruption and human rights violations.

Human rights violations are the result of a weak rule of law and a lack of accountability. Corruption in the oil and gas and mining industries, for example, keeps the poor impoverished, props up corrupt regimes, and causes national and international security concerns.

Corruption accounts for about a third of all development aid. The issue is twofold: donor responses to corruption are reactive rather than proactive, focusing only on holding the supply side accountable (such as how the World Bank INT debars companies) and rarely discussing corrupt government officials, and donors do not devote enough attention to strengthening institutions’ capacity to prevent corruption in the first place. Anti-corruption activities are frequently disguised as governance programs, creating an environment conducive to corruption.

The symposium report, dated April 25, 2018, “Corruption and Human Rights: The Linkages, the Challenges and Paths for Progress” of CARR CENTER for Human Rights Policy – Harvard Kennedy School concluded with significant recommendations, among with are the following 1:

1. Focus on what works: demonstrate the effect of anti-corruption efforts, provide incentives for private sector, public sector, and multilateral organizations (including donor agencies) to proactively integrate anticorruption efforts into their work, and focus on both the demand and supply side.
   
2. Learn more about the opportunities–and limitations–of transparency and accountability efforts for combating corruption, learning from the experience of accountability mechanisms for human rights violations.

1 Read more on CARR CENTER for Human Rights Policy – Harvard Kennedy School, Corruption and Human Rights: The Linkages, the Challenges and Paths for Progress, April 25, 2018, https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/corruption_symposium_report.pdf