A/HRC/28/73 a relevant factor in legal proceedings to annul or rescind a contract, or to withdraw a concession (article 34). Article 35 obliges States parties to take measures to ensure that entities or persons who have suffered damage as a result of an act of corruption have the right to initiate legal proceedings against those responsible for that damage in order to obtain compensation. One distinction between the criminal law approach and the private law approach in the fight against corruption is that the latter addresses the impact of corruption on the person concerned and aims to provide redress in the form of compensation. 27. A human rights perspective on the impact of corruption can add an approach that moves the victims to the centre of the fight against corruption. It does so by highlighting the negative impacts that corruption brings to the individual concerned, to groups of individuals typically affected by corruption (which are very often marginalized groups), and to society at large. Analysing the link between corruption and impairment of the enjoyment of human rights may contribute to a better understanding of the effects of corruption — notably, its human dimension and social implications — and can be an important step towards making corruption a public issue. In that way, the social impact of corruption is made visible; this generates awareness in society about the consequences of this scourge and creates new alliances in the fight against corruption. 28. Moreover, applying a human rights perspective to acts of corruption by State and non-State actors reveals that the State bears the ultimate responsibility for such acts. This responsibility means that the State must abstain from engaging in any form of corruption in order to avoid violating human rights. Moreover, the State is responsible for reacting to the negative impact of corruption in order to fulfil its human rights obligations, and in that connection, criminal prosecution is one of the instruments for combating corruption. Criminal prosecution is not, however, an effective tool for remedying the negative consequences of corruption for the individual, for specific groups or for society in general, while from a human rights perspective, States are required not only to prosecute such crimes, but also to take measures to address the negative impact of corruption. Furthermore, by looking at corruption from a human rights perspective, the need for preventive measures becomes even more apparent. By integrating a human rights perspective into anticorruption strategies, the implementation of preventive policies relating to matters such as transparency, affidavits, laws on access to public information, and external controls, becomes an obligation. 29. Corruption can lead to a human rights violation directly or indirectly. Corruption may directly constitute a violation of a human right when a corrupt act is deliberately used as a means to violate a right, or when a State acts in a way that prevents individuals from enjoying that right or fails to act in a way that ensures that individuals can enjoy that right. In other situations, corruption is an essential factor contributing to a chain of events that eventually leads to the violation of a human right. In such a case, the right is violated by an act that derives from a corrupt act and the act of corruption is a necessary condition for the violation. Such a situation will arise, for example, if public officials allow the illegal importation of toxic waste from other countries in return for a bribe, and that waste is placed in, or close to, a residential area. The rights to life and health of residents of that area would be violated, with the violation caused indirectly as a result of the bribery. Another example is the situation of prisoners who are forced to bribe prison guards in order to avoid ill-treatment or to ensure good conditions of detention. This kind of corruption affects a whole group indirectly. As the Committee against Torture pointed out in a recent report: “Linking anti-corruption and human rights frameworks in practice requires an 10