Humanizing (Anti)corruption: The socio-legal values of a human rights-based approach to corruption

Abstract

This master’s thesis intends to contribute to the current academic and policy debate on the values of determining whether a particular human rights violation was caused by a corrupt behavior; and to defend a human rights-based approach to corruption, based on its added socio-legal values. With this purpose, it analyzes and compares the legal reasoning and socio-legal dynamics of three human rights court cases involving and not involving corruption. By applying a directed content analysis combined with socio-legal interpretative technique, this study explores and compares the rationality and the values addressed in both corrupt and non-corrupt cases. The research questions addressed are: (i) What is the socio-legal value of a human rights-based approach to corruption? (ii) Why try to determine whether a particular human rights violation was caused by corruption? Additionally, the complementary sub-question is: (iii) What is the value of identifying whether especially economic and social rights violations were caused by corruption? The results reveal that there are interconnected and mutually reinforcing socio-legal values in applying the human rights lens to combating corruption: (i) it is an improvement towards the justiciability of economic and social rights; (ii) it is a change of paradigm from the insufficient criminal approach to a focus on the social harm; and (iii) it is a more satisfactory approach to the overlapping harmful effects of cor-ruption and inequality. The combination of these values can be used as a legal empowerment strategy, with a particular social accountability dimension, in order to strengthen the disad-vantaged, and fight the encroachment caused by corruption on the enjoyment of human rights, especially economic and social rights.