A/HRC/28/59 explanation for why human rights violations committed by officials of authoritarian regimes may be influenced by the external financial support they receive. 5. Suitable legal and policy concepts are critical to recognizing better the connection between finance and gross human rights violations, taking into consideration the fungibility of the money and the complexity of the administrative and economic structures and the dynamics of authoritarian regimes. The purpose of the present report is to contribute to a better understanding of those links and provide a framework for a future report that will address some legal considerations pertinent to preventing financial complicity and holding lenders accountable for assisting in the empowerment of abusive regimes. 6. The Independent Expert follows the definition of complicity provided by the International Commission of Jurists: “enabling,” “facilitating,” or “exacerbating” human rights abuses through financing.2 In order to address the notion of complicity and to grasp its implications in the financial field, the Independent Expert proposes a macro and holistic approach, interpreting the various connections to sovereign financing. In the present report, sovereign financing refers to every financial loan or provision of assistance to States which includes financing by private, bilateral or multilateral lenders, based on commercial, development or concessional objectives. 7. For the purpose of the present report, the Independent Expert understands “gross human rights violations” to mean severe and systematic violations of international human rights, which may amount to an international crime, as codified by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, or any other systematic, widespread and severe violation of internationally recognized physical integrity rights, such as torture, enforced disappearances, extralegal, arbitrary or summary executions, or arbitrary detention. 3 II. Why does financial complicity matter and what has the United Nations done in that field? 8. Political institutions influence sovereign borrowing, but lending to States also shapes the political institutions of the recipient, including those which are used to perpetrate crimes. That is the fundamental reason why it is important to reflect, from a human rights perspective, whether and under what conditions States engaging in gross human rights violations should receive financial assistance. 9. During the founding years of the United Nations, the issue of financial complicity came up during the 12 subsequent war crimes trials held by the United States of America in Nuremberg after the Second World War. The Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, when judging whether certain German industrialists who had donated money to the Schutzstaffel (SS) were responsible for criminal acts, reasoned that “it remains clear from the evidence that each of them gave to Himmler, the Reich Leader SS, a blank check. His criminal organization was maintained and we have no doubt that some of this money went to its 2 3 4 See International Commission of Jurists, Corporate Complicity and Legal Accountability (Geneva, International Commission of Jurists, 2008), vol. 1. This definition is set out only to clarify the meaning of gross violations of human rights for the purpose of the present report, in order to emphasize that the Independent Expert has in mind multiple and large-scale violations of such rights. That should not be interpreted as an attempt to come up with an official definition of the term for the United Nations, or limit the scope of application of the term to civil integrity rights only.