At the side of the 59th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, TI-DS and partners co-organised a panel discussion to discuss solutions to the vicious cycle of corruption, human rights violations, and insecurity. Senior Policy & Campaigns Officer Emily Wegener shares takeaways and reflections from the event.
Security and law enforcement agencies are often the first point of contact between citizens and the state. When they abuse their power, the impact on trust and state legitimacy cuts deep. Corruption also diverts resources from the fulfilment of human rights and peacebuilding. This makes corruption both a human rights issue and a threat to international peace and security – yet it is not treated as such: anti-corruption measures are still often viewed more as a technical fix, rather than as a necessity to ensure the enjoyment of human rights and prevent armed conflict.
To mark the launch of ‘Sabotaging Peace: Corruption as a Threat to International Peace and Security’ last week, TI-DS co-convened a panel discussion with DCAF and the UN Human Rights Office (UN OHCHR) on ‘Corruption, Human Rights and Security: Strengthening Prevention Through Accountability’ in Geneva. At this year’s 59th session, the Human Rights Council (HRC) will adopt a renewed resolution on ‘The negative impact of corruption on the enjoyment of human rights’ — a timely backdrop for a discussion examining how corruption in defence, security and law enforcement undermines the protection and enjoyment of human rights.
Sharing headlines from ‘Sabotaging Peace’, Dr Francesca Grandi, Head of Programme at TI-DS, called for the need for a paradigm shift in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, security sector reform (SSR) and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) processes. Current approaches prioritise stabilisation over reform and thus fail to introduce anti-corruption measures from the onset. Corrupt networks, however, don’t wait: they are quick to adapt and entrench themselves in post-conflict political structures. By the time a situation is considered stable enough to integrate transparency and accountability instruments, corruption has often already become endemic.
Upasana Garoo, Senior Advisor at DCAF, shared findings from the new report on Corruption Controls and Integrity-Building in Law Enforcement. She highlighted how corruption in law enforcement is systemic and strategic, and not just a consequence but also a driver of weak governance. Effective solutions should be grounded in an understanding of the political economy, aim at changing incentive structures, balance practicality with political realism, and be mutually reinforcing.
María José Veramendi Villa, Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Officer at the UN OHCHR, shared insights from a report published in March on the ‘Impact of arms transfers on human rights’, which highlights how the lack of good governance in the defence sector contributes to illicit arms transfers and diversion. The lack of transparency in the sector, close industry-government ties, conflicts of interest, as well as complex, transnational procurement lines exacerbate corruption risks in arms transfers. To mitigate these risks, actors should adopt a human rights-based approach to anti-corruption, which puts the victims at the centre and highlights that corruption negatively impacts a State’s ability to fulfil its human rights obligations.
Insights from evidence and practice on proven solutions
The problem is complex and widespread, but there are proven solutions. Key panel recommendations included:
- Adopt a human-rights-based and conflict-sensitive approach to anti-corruption: Design anti-corruption initiatives with the aim to prevent human rights violations and conflict, putting victims of corruption at the centre; and foster closer collaboration between national, regional, and international human rights, peacebuilding, security sector reform, and anti-corruption bodies, as well as coherence between policies and strategies addressing these issues.
- Ensure complementarity and a systems-based approach: Ground peacebuilding, SSR, and anti-corruption initiatives on political economy analyses that examine the underlying socio-economic and power systems, as well as the incentive structures driving corruption at different levels. Use PEA to identify gaps across the entire system and put in place measures that are mutually reinforcing.
- Build coalitions across the whole of society: Successful interventions managed to build ‘coalitions of the willing’ across media, civil society, government, donors and the private sector, to create the right structure of incentives and identify multiple entry points for change.
- Emphasize human rights due diligence in arms transfers: Encourage companies in the defence and security sectors to adopt human rights policies that included a due diligence process.
- Attach targeted conditionality to military assistance: Make the provision of military assistance conditional on transparency, accountability and anti-corruption measures (e.g. external audits, open contracting regulations, public access to information).
- Transform social norms: Examine the cultural and social norms that defence, security and law enforcement forces are operating in, alongside institutional weaknesses. Where corruption is seen as necessary, and is generally socially accepted, pair technical solutions with longer-term, transformative measures aimed at shifting social norms.
In fragile contexts, corruption is the glue holding together violent systems that have the power to block meaningful attempts at building peace and protecting human rights. Anti-corruption is a powerful tool to prevent and mitigate violence, conflict and human rights violations – if we put anti-corruption and conflict-sensitivity at the core of these interventions/approaches.