The Basel Institute's Vice-President, Prof. Dr. iur. Anne Peters, has published an illuminating paper on "Corruption as a Violation of International Human Rights". 

Published in the European Journal of International Law, the article asks two basic questions:

  • Can we legally view corruption as a violation of human rights?
  • Should we?

Peters' clear writing and examples make this an essential read for anyone concerned about corruption, human rights and the link between the two.

States perceived to be highly corrupt are at the same time those with a poor human rights record. International institutions have therefore assumed a negative feedback loop between both social harms. They deplore that corruption undermines the enjoyment of human rights and, concomitantly, employ human rights as a normative framework to denounce and combat corruption. But the human rights-based approach has been criticized as vague and over-reaching.

This cross-country report on prevention of public sector corruption analyses the preventive measures that have proven to be effective and successful in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The review focuses on twenty-one countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and includes examples from OECD countries. The report is based on questionnaires that were completed by governments, NGOs and international partners in participating countries.

This paper sets out lessons from a mixed-methods study that identified and explored ‘positive outlier’ cases of bribery reduction in challenging governance environments. It discusses the two cases the research examined in depth:

The Basel Institute’s governance team has been working with the Institute on Nursing of the University of Basel in support of an SDC-funded project aimed at strengthening the nursing sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Using the Basel Institute’s unique “Power and Influence Analysis”, a political economy methodology, the aim is to assist the project team in determining more effective strategies, including specific projects, for enhancing the health and governance sector in BiH.