A/HRC/4/71 page 8 of Poland’s Civil Service Act (1998) which introduced clear criteria and a competitive procedure for the recruitment of civil servants, thus allowing scrutiny over appointments and accountability of public servants, while providing them with protection against pressure to follow a patron’s personal or illegal interests. In New Zealand, a different approach was pursued. The responsibility of appointing public service chief executives was given to the State Service Commission to reduce the risk of favouritism and conflicts of interest. Mr. Eriksson concluded by noting that in both cases, open and competitive recruitment with transparent criteria reduced opportunities for clientelism and, in the process, contributed to stabilizing the public administration and strengthening the rule of law, which, in turn, contributed to developing the capacities needed to realize human rights. 15. Nihal Jayawickrama, Coordinator of the United Nations-sponsored Judicial Integrity Group, former Executive Director of Transparency International and former Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice of Sri Lanka, acting as an expert, addressed the interconnection between corruption and human rights. First, he noted the surprising absence of any reference to corruption in the principal human rights instruments (and the lack of mention of human rights in the treaties and resolutions on corruption) despite the fact that “practically every protected human right can be eroded by corruption and it is the already vulnerable who are victimized”. Mr. Jayawickrama distinguished between “petty corruption”, which takes the form of a lowly public official taking a bribe for doing something that is already required/prohibited by law, and “grand corruption”, which is carried out by well-placed officials who seek payment for exercising their discretionary powers. Petty corruption originates in “human need” while grand corruption is rooted in “human greed”. In the developing world, Mr. Jayawickrama maintains, “corruption caused by human greed at the highest levels of Government invariably leads to corruption dictated by human need”. An example of the latter was noted in statistics from Bangladesh on the percentage of households that have paid bribes to secure basic services, such as admission into school, admission into hospital, a bank loan, and electricity connection. Mr. Jayawickrama noted that where corruption is pervasive, all human rights suffer: the prevalence of corruption requires that civil and political rights be restricted, and when national resources are diverted from public use, Governments become unable to fulfil their social, economic, and cultural rights obligations. Mr. Jayawickrama observed that corruption exists in one form or another in every State. He added, however, that countries appear to be better able to contain corruption when they possess functioning legal and institutional mechanisms, enjoy governance that is participatory, transparent and accountable, and respect human rights. Welcoming the recent establishment of the Judicial Group on Strengthening Judicial Integrity, he noted their preference for human rights language (“right to a fair trial”) over “anti-corruption” language. 16. During the discussion, the difficulty encountered in implementing UNCAC and the stress it placed on State officials who struggle to deal with an ever-widening circle of officials that need to be held accountable, was noted. A number of essential reforms to improve the capacity to carry out anti-corruption work were identified: foremost among them is the reform of the legal system to ensure the independence of judges and transparency in their election. There was a call for sharing of information and experience on how to establish an effective, independent and autonomous judiciary that is credible and accessible to citizens. Participants insisted on the