Why Corruption Matters in Human Rights

Corruption and human rights are intimately connected in the real life experiences of people in most parts of the world. Corruption matters in human rights because it is a promising entry point to analyse and understand the acts and events that precede the violent act of the human rights violation. Corruption is not an inconsequential anecdote in human rights work, analysis or activism. Corruption and rights violations, as actualized or implied corporal violence, are manifestations of the same root causes and produced by the same conditions. Hence, they should not be separated in policy or analysis in global and national efforts to improve the lives of the poor who suffer the most from systems plagued by widespread corruption and violence. For human rights research and practice, it is important to make corruption a central issue and raise our gaze beyond notions of state and state centred analysis and intervention, with a focus on the actual practices.