The relationships between corruption and human rights are complex but cry out for exploring. Could anti-corruption benefit from a human rights perspective? How can the two communities work better together – and what are some risks and challenges?

This Quick Guide gives a brief introduction to the ideas of the Basel Institute’s Vice-President, Professor Anne Peters, and some of our initial work at the intersection of corruption and human rights.

The authors of this academic paper discuss how attitudes to preventing and tackling corruption are different between cultures, and have also changed over time within them, focusing on the East (Asia) and the West (Western Europe & North America). This is particularly important for multi-national companies to consider when developing compliance programmes. 

Chaque année, les flux financiers illicites, dont la corruption est une composante majeure, font perdre environ 88,6 milliards de dollars (3,7 % de son PIB) à l'Afrique. La lutte contre ce fléau est un effort collectif et le secteur privé a un rôle majeur à jouer dans la promotion d'un environnement économique prospère et d’un développement durable du continent.

Africa is estimated to lose an unbelievable USD 88.6 billion (3.7% of Africa’s GDP) each year to illicit financial flows, of which corruption is a major component. Rooting out corruption is a collective effort, and the private sector has a major role to play in laying down the foundations for clean business environments and sustainable development.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Governance, this paper interprets informal networks as investments made by citizens and business people to cope with the public sphere. Informal networks often orchestrate corruption, connecting public and private actors. The paper aims to understand their key characteristics, scopes, and functional roles.

Donors, governments and anti-corruption practitioners seeking alternative tools to address systemic corruption are increasingly turning to behavioural science. Behavioural anti-corruption approaches appear promising because they respond to a growing body of descriptive evidence on how certain social norms and mental models drive corruption, particularly in fragile contexts. Interventions that target social norms and seek to shift people’s behaviours away from corrupt practices could be more effective and long-lasting than ones that, for example, simply add more regulations and controls.