Human rights mechanisms for anti-corruption, transparency and accountability: enabling the right to health

Abstract

Background: The presence of corruption in State institutions and broader society presents a significant obstacle to the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. The Universal Periodic Review, a Member State-led peer review system administered by the Human Rights Council, is a core tool of human rights, including the right to health accountability. This paper builds on existing research to examine processes that support State engagement on the issue of corruption. We identify opportunities for States to use the Universal Periodic Review to support anti-corruption, transparency and accountability to control corruption in the health-care sector.Objectives: This paper focuses on health sector how human rights mechanisms, and particularly the Universal Periodic Review, can be a tool for greater accountability for the right to health for corruption in the health sector. Methods: The research team applied qualitative content analysis methods to analyze all 135 Universal Periodic Review documents produced during 2018 in order to analyze how human rights mechanisms address the impact of corruption on the realization of the right to health. Results: Although health rights violations are often addressed within human rights mechanisms such as the UPR, corruption remains under-addressed, suggesting that there are gaps in understanding how corruption can seriously undermine the right to health. Conclusion: Human rights mechanisms should drive greater attention to the importance of addressing corruption in health. In order to make the UPR more effective, this paper suggests that there is a need to generate more awareness of corruption-based violations of the right to health in order to promote greater health accountabilityPractical tools such as strategic litigation and social audits can also contribute to creating greater transparency and accountability in dealing with corruption.

Exploring Corruption as a Violation of Human Rights in the Practices of International Human Rights Institutions

“…This compels the Comm ESCR to prioritize monitoring budget allocation and removing obstacles that hamper allocation and spending, including corruption. Revisiting Boersma's finding that the IHRIs during the period of 1994 to 2012 had not yet clarified the link between corruption and human rights, Sekalala and Masud made a similar observation as Boersma regarding the vagueness and generality of the recommendations that do not help to target stakeholder action (Sekalala and Masud 2021). This is a missed opportunity because Sekalala and Masud's analysis indicates that although the UPR mechanism has been useful for identifying a variety of health-related human rights issues, it has been used only modestly to identify corruption in the healthcare sector as a human rights concern (ibid).…”

The Application of a Human Rights Approach toward Crimes of Corruption: Analyzing Anti-Corruption Regulations and Judicial Decisions

“…Regarding corruption, the state infringes on the right to health when it allots funds for the underprivileged to receive free treatment in a few designated hospitals. However, the number of deserved hospital directors is arbitrarily reduced, meaning the hospital's activities injure the state and violate the right of the poor to free medical care (Sekalala et al 2020).…”

Strengthening the Accountability Mechanisms as a Strategy to Counter the Risk of Corruption in the Public Sector of the Maldives

“…The United Nations (UN) began officially recognizing corruption as a global issue in 2000 by adopting Resolution 55/61. Subsequent resolutions were passed in 2001 and 2002, culminating in establishing the first-ever international treaty on corruption, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), in 2003 (Sekalala et al, 2020). In recent years, various United Nations human rights mechanisms have acknowledged the detrimental effects of corruption on human rights (Sekalala et al, 2020).…”