International human rights law may serve as a language through which lawyers and others describe the harms resulting from corruption, but this approach has significant limitations as a legal framework. Despite a growing emphasis among scholars and practitioners on a human rights approach to the problem of corruption, this body of law does not provide a strong basis for addressing such conduct. International human rights treaties make no mention of corruption, and human rights treaty bodies have not brought conceptual clarity to the question of how corruption violates or undermines human rights. Given that human rights law binds States alone, it is also ill-suited to a phenomenon that typically occurs at the intersection of the public and private sectors. Even as a language for describing how corruption harms social and economic rights, human rights law has its limitations, some of which come into relief when compared with the field of development economics.

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In November 2000, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC or Convention) and its three protocols on human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and firearms. These instruments are the product of three years of diplomatic negotiations, and they represent a substantial contribution to international lawmaking in the area of transnational criminal law. UNTOC has attracted almost universal participation, with 190 states parties at present. Nearly two decades after the adoption of these instruments, however, remarkably little is known about whether states parties have implemented UNTOC and its protocols in their national legislation, whether they enforce such legislation, and whether they make use of UNTOC's provisions concerning international cooperation (e.g., extradition and mutual legal assistance). In other words, the influence of these instruments in practice remains largely unknown.