Tag Archives: Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Asking Too Much: Why Regional Human Rights Courts Cannot Tackle Corruption

Posted on by
8

Should regional human rights courts, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), expand their mandates to explicitly address corruption? Commentators have explored the possibilities of incorporating corruption into the human rights framework (see here and here), and in a previous post, Kaitlin Beach specifically explored the benefits of utilizing regional human rights courts to address corruption (see here and here). Kaitlin emphasizes certain advantages that regional human rights courts have, mainly their flexibility in the types of reparations they can demand. This enables them to order structural anticorruption changes at the state level, as opposed to simply issuing individual indictments.

Despite these advantages, though, we should not get our hopes too high about the role these courts can play in the fight against corruption. Indeed, the IACHR – which Kaitlin points to as her lead example for the productive role that regional human rights bodies can play in combating corruption – is currently burdened by its lack of compliance mechanisms, inefficiency, and financial instability. These setbacks have caused the IACHR to have only limited success in combating human rights abuses. To expect an institution that is still struggling to fulfill its original mandate to also take on an additional mission is unrealistic, and adding this additional burden would further strain the limited resources that courts like the IACHR have available to remedy human rights abuses.

Consider the following limitations of the IACHR, which are characteristic of other regional human rights bodies as well, and which make it unlikely that these institutions will be able to do what some anticorruption advocates hope: Continue reading →

Coming Along for the Ride: Regional Human Rights Courts Should Demand Government Measures to Affirmatively Address Corruption

Posted on by
Reply

In an earlier post, I discussed an order by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights demanding that Brazil investigate and report on prison guards’ corruption. Mandating that a country review its own corruption seems to be a new step for an international judicial body. The approach suggests a way to more closely integrate corruption-related concerns into international human rights work: including corruption-specific mandates within broader holdings. Other international adjudicative bodies, particularly regional human rights courts, should follow this model.

The idea of directly adjudicating corruption through an international court has been floated but also strongly opposed. Some corruption commentators advocate making grand corruption a crime against humanity that could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). As discussed on this blog, Judge Mark Wolf has proposed an independent international anticorruption court, an idea that met with some tempered support and a good deal of opposition (see here, here, and Matthew’s concerns here). I agree that grand corruption does not belong in the ICC or an independent court. To reject grand corruption as a stand-alone offense to be prosecuted in international criminal tribunals is not, however, to reject that corruption should be addressed by international criminal tribunals where it is relevant. Existing bodies like regional human rights courts—the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the much newer African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, as well as other, even younger human rights bodies in Southeast Asia and the Middle East—should explicitly address corruption-related issues within the context of the large volume of human rights adjudication already taking place. As other commentators have already discussed, these regional human rights courts can fold corruption into their respective mandates and generate meaningful corruption-related law (see here, here, and here). Indeed, regional human rights bodies are already well-placed to highlight corruption where it emerges and to respond appropriately to both the existing situation and future concerns:

Continue reading →

Mandatory Prison Corruption Report Looks for a Cure in Brazil

Posted on by
1

In a recent provisional measure (currently only in Spanish), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Brazilian government to take a variety of steps to address human rights violations at the notorious Curado prison complex. Such violations are pervasive: Shockingly, the Curado guards, in exchange for kickbacks or other illicit benefits, essentially handed over control of the prison (and other prisoners) to certain inmates (often the most violent or feared), turned a blind eye to or participated in the complex’s massive drugs and weapons trade, and repeatedly failed to stop prison breaks and riots.

Notably, among the steps in the Court’s order is a demand that the government investigate and report back to the Court on corruption, particularly on weapons and drugs trafficking, among officials at the prison. The Court—like its companion institution, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which investigates and reports to the Court—is not directly tasked with addressing corruption. However, its mandate includes protecting the right to humane treatment. At Curado, the prison guards, as agents of Brazil, affirmatively jeopardized the safety of prisoners with their corruption, and the Brazilian government failed to protect prisoners from abuses stemming from those actions. The Court’s measure, drawing from the Commission’s recommendations, emphasizes that the widespread corruption of the guards and other prison officials was one of the factors that allowed the inhumane conditions in the prison to continue.

The Court’s ruling seems to be one of the first times an international judicial body has ordered a country to undertake a review of corruption within its borders and then be held directly accountable to that international body. Thus, beyond its immediate significance to the Curado situation, the Court’s decision is a milestone in more directly recognizing and addressing corruption as a proximate cause of human rights violations. While this recognition will not by itself resolve the dire situation at Curado, it is an important step forward, and is notable for several reasons:

Continue reading →