A/HRC/44/43 with limited transparency, enables corrupt officials and businesses to thrive.30 Bribery is particularly prevalent in land-acquisition contexts, for example when officials accept bribes from companies for access to or to register land. Corruption also takes place where the police, judiciary or other State authorities permit or enable land to be misappropriated. While large-scale land acquisition is required for many business activities, such as agribusiness and infrastructure projects, corruption in this context often results in very large numbers of people being dispossessed of their land.31 The Working Group has highlighted the special relationship between indigenous peoples and their ancestral land and observed that compensation, or an offer of alternative land, may not remedy forced displacement.32 The lack of remedy and the violation of the relationship between people and land makes indigenous peoples’ experience of losing land to corrupt land acquisition particularly pronounced. 15. In the purchase and titling of land, there is the potential for corruption by companies through different bureaucratic processes. 33 It is critical that States strengthen land governance institutions and ensure that people can effectively gain title to land and recognition of their land rights. Effective remedy is needed to prevent the human rights abuses that may arise when corruption occurs and people are wrongfully dispossessed or deprived of their property and livelihoods. 34 Governments need to strengthen policy coherence regarding environmental impact assessments, large-scale development projects, land management and forest conservation.35 C. Health and pharmaceutical supply chains 16. The pandemic provides an opportunity to consider corruption in supply chains and how a business, wherever it is in the supply chain, can be implicated in human rights abuses by causing, contributing to or being directly linked to them due to its business relationships with other parties.36 Global supply chains are often susceptible to corruption, as companies and their agents may pay bribes to gain access to markets. Bribes may be paid to avoid government health and safety inspections, for example in factories. Corruption results in essential products, such as food and medicine, being diverted from public market supply chains into private hands. 17. Even in non-crisis settings, corruption afflicts the pharmaceutical sector. Allegations of corruption in the health-care sector are persistent. Responses to the pandemic within these sectors may result in an increase in corrupt or abusive activities that may undermine States’ responses.37 Drug diversion presents a challenge in pharmaceutical supply chains, as drugs may be diverted from public use to parties who pay bribes to acquire scarce medicines. The penetration of counterfeit and substandard medicines into supply chains is another challenge. 18. In March 2020, Global Health Action published, jointly with the World Health Organization, an issue on anticorruption, transparency, and accountability in the health sector. 38 Topics covered related to the sector’s ability to prevent, detect and sanction corruption in order to address the threats that such corruption poses to the ability of health systems to perform effectively during crises. While the global need for health-care services provides opportunities for companies to engineer, produce and deliver equipment such as ventilators,39 there are risks of corruption and price-gouging due to scarcity of supply.40 The 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 6 See www.icar.ngo/publications-2017-5-9-tainted-lands-corruption-in-large-scale-land-deals/. Ibid. A/72/162, para. 27. A/71/291, para. 62. Ibid., para. 90. A/74/198, para. 37. A/71/291, para. 35. See www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_and_the_coronavirus. Available at www.tandfonline.com/toc/zgha20/13/sup1. See https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/03/rival-companies-work-together-to-manufacturemedical-ventilators/.