Localizing the Human Rights-Based Approach to Fight Corruption: The Role of Ubuntu

Prosper Maguchu

doi:10.52854/cchrr.37

Abstract

Claims by many experts on the connection between corruption and human rights, and especially the realization that corruption undermines the enjoyment of human rights, have led practitioners to advocate a human rights-based approach to corruption. However, it comes at a time where the global human rights movement is under assault, this contribution addresses the emerging localization discourse in human rights. Researchers and campaigners are adapting the international human rights system to local institutions and meanings in a process of “vernacularization”. This is by taking the needs of the community and the language that makes sense locally as the entry point of human rights advocacy. The question that arises is what role can the local understanding of human rights play? This contribution suggests answers to this question by using the African concept of ubuntu (humanness) to reinforce measures against corruption.

Highlights

Over the past decade, human rights activists and anti-corruption campaigners have been occupied with the connection between corruption and human rights
AlbinyLackey is correct when he points out that practitioners from both the field of human rights and anti-corruption “have grown increasingly comfortable on one another’s turf, and the lines that divide their work have become quite porous.”[1]. This is because, “human rights activists are learning to grapple with the human rights impacts of corruption, and anti-corruption campaigners frequently deploy a human rights analysis to bolster their case for reform.”[2]
In a 2009 joint publication with the defunct International Council on Human Rights Policy (ICHRP), Transparency International (TI) issued a thorough publication that focuses on “where and how the use of a human rights framework might strengthen national and local anti-corruption programmes and at how key human rights principles can be operationalized in anticorruption work.”[5]

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Human rights activists and anti-corruption campaigners have been occupied with the connection between corruption and human rights. 14 Such approach (i) enhances the justiciability of economic and social rights; (ii) it is a radical shift from the insufficient criminal approach to a focus on the social harm; and (iii) it is a more satisfactory approach to the far-reaching effects of corruption and inequality.[15] De Castro e Silva believes by treating anti-corruption and human rights as mutually reinforcing, practitioners can create a ‘legal empowerment strategy’, that focuses on the social accountability dimension It strengthens the disadvantaged, and fights the encroachment caused by corruption on the enjoyment of human rights, especially economic and social rights.[16]. It will discuss the potential of localizing human rights - one of the emerging discussions in the field of human rights - in particular within the concept of ubuntu and how it can be used in context of anti-corruption

CORRUPTION AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH

LOCALIZING HUMAN RIGHTS

UBUNTU AND ANTI-CORRUPTION

CONCLUSION