Corruption is a phenomenon with wide-ranging consequences, notably the facilitation and institutionalization of human rights violations. Corruption’s pervasive and malign nature enormously impacts the daily lives of billions of people. The World Economic Forum estimates that the cost of corruption is $2.6 trillion, and companies and individuals pay more than $1 trillion a year in bribes, according to the World Bank. Corruption also facilitates money laundering and illicit financial flows on a global scale.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, recently stated that corruption: “deprives people of their rights and drives away foreign investment and despoils the environment; breeds desillusion with government and governance—often at the root of political dysfunction and social disunity; and, drives and thrives on the breakdown of political and social institutions”.[1]

It is today generally known that corruption “facilitates, perpetuates and institutionalizes” violations of human rights, and that more instances of violence and torture are found where there are higher levels of corruption. According to the Human Rights Council, it is “difficult to find a human right that could not be violated by corruption,” since it disproportionately aggravates and compounds existing societal and global disadvantages and inequalities.[2]

Corruption and human rights have however long been addressed in both academia and policy circles as two separate domains of knowledge and practice, which can explain an implementation gap between human rights and anti-corruption efforts. Yet, corruption and rights violations can flourish in similar contexts, and corruption can lead to human rights violations, and vice versa.

There is a growing recognition of this connection at the UN, especially since it was addressed in the 7th annual report of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 20 March 2014. That report was followed by Human Rights Council Resolution of 19 March 2018 on the negative impact of corruption on the right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In 2019 came a thematic report on the relation between corruption and torture by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. It is also recognised today that corruption for instance impacts rights to life, to justice, to housing, to health and to education

[1] Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council on Corruption in Conflict,” September 10, 2018, https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2018-09-10/secretary-generals-remarks-security-council-corruption-conflict.

[2] Human Rights Council Twenty-eighth session Agenda items 3 and 5: Final report of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on the issue of the negative impact of corruption on the enjoyment of

human rights. 2015.