A/HRC/23/26
to emphasize the same approach in the post-2015 development agenda, because efforts to
combat corruption were most effective when coupled with an approach that respected all
human rights, including those of the accused. Noting that there was growing awareness of
the intrinsic links between human rights and the struggle to combat corruption, she stressed
the urgent need to increase synergy between efforts to implement the United Nations
Convention against Corruption and international human rights conventions. Strengthened
policy coherence and collaboration was required between UNODC, UNDP, OHCHR, civil
society and the intergovernmental processes in Vienna, Geneva and New York. Recalling
that, from 2000 to 2009, developing countries had lost US$8.44 trillion to illicit financial
flows, 10 times more than the foreign aid they had received, the High Commissioner
pointed out that the impact of corruption on development and on human rights was
multifaceted; so too must be the response.
6
Mr. Marschall said that, when Transparency International had begun its crusade
against corruption, the link between anti-corruption efforts and human rights had not been
so clear. After two decades of hard work, Transparency International had come to the
realization that the two were closely and deeply linked. Corruption was a violation of
human rights and the fight against it could not be successful if there was only a focus on
economic development. The focus should be on people and how corruption was devastating
their lives; a people-centred approach was a human rights approach. The moderator also
reported on a social media campaign about the human rights case against corruption that
OHCHR had been running with UNODC, UNDP and Transparency International ahead of
the panel discussion.1 The hashtag #RightsNotBribes created on Twitter for the campaign
had reached almost 2.3 million unique users within a week. Some 1,000 people and
organizations had sent tweets using this hashtag and generated more than 11.5 million
potential views. The campaign also included a Google+ Hangout online video discussion
broadcast live on YouTube.
7.
Ms. Pursuhottam shared several testimonies from a research study coordinated by
the Huairou Commission, where grassroots women in eight countries from 11 organizations
across Africa, Latin America and South Asia had documented the impact of corruption on
women and how they fought it. Grassroots women experienced corruption as endemic,
pervasive and part of their everyday life experience, and about 63 per cent of them had
reported having been asked to pay a bribe. Those women’s concern was about their rights
and entitlements to basic services, their right to water and shelter, and their children’s right
to education. She explained that the definition of corruption by grassroots women was more
nuanced and included not just bribery or misuse of power, but also poor or absent service
delivery, poor governance, as well as physical or sexual abuse. The study had found that
accountability and governance were achieved not just because they participated in, but
because they were affiliated to a mobilized constituency. This made a strong and direct case
for their demand for more support. Many felt the need for education and information on
corruption and legal expertise on how to fight it. Several existing anti-corruption strategies
created laws and frameworks to protect rights but could not ensure their implementation.
8.
In her testimony, Ms. Rodriguez Cerro spoke of the impact of corruption on access
to justice, basic services, land and other rights. In rural areas, when women asked for
something they were often also asked to pay in sex. Those women had created strategies
together with the police and judges, courts and local governments, and they had been able
to forge alliances with them so that women could obtain their own identity cards without
getting involved in bribery. Grassroots women had to carve out their own space in the
1
4
See
www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/GoodGovernance/Pages/HumanRightsAgainstCorruption.aspx.
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