Posts Tagged ‘anti corruption’

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FIDH and Transparency International jointly tackle corruption with a new human rights-based guide

June 29, 2026

Against a backdrop of rising corruption worldwide, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Transparency International and Transparency International France have joined forces to produce a guide for civil society organisations involved in the human rights and anti-corruption movements. So stated the two NGOs on 25 June 2026.

Corruption is not a victimless crime. When it allows funds intended for public services to be misappropriated, it deprives people of their rights—including the right to healthcare, justice, education and a healthy environment. Moreover, when it leads to the capture of public institutions, it undermines the rule of law, restricts access to justice and enables impunity.

The guide “Breaking the Silos: A Practical Guide to Fighting Corruption with a Human Rights-Based Approach” offers practical tools to better document the impacts of corruption, pursue redress and strengthen the accountability of those responsible, whether they be individuals, companies or states. It emphasises the importance of placing victims at the centre of efforts and of promoting access to justice and redress. The guide is available in English, French and Spanish.

This guide is based on a simple conviction: the movements fighting corruption and defending human rights must join forces to strengthen our actions and develop joint strategies to confront a phenomenon that inflicts profound harm on societies around the world.

The guide covers the steps involved in linking incidents of corruption to human rights abuses and developing strategies for accountability and redress, including:
 understanding the links between corruption, human rights, victims and causality;
 documenting human rights violations and patterns of grand corruption;
 protecting individuals, data, sources and whistleblowers;
 holding individuals, companies and states to account;
 using advocacy mechanisms and quasi-judicial channels;
 using asset recovery as a tool for justice and redress.

Recognising that corruption fuels human rights abuses is vital to protecting human dignity. By placing victims at the centre of efforts, the anti-corruption and human rights communities can make progress in combating grand corruption and its impact on people and their rights.

The PDF of the guide in English can be downloaded here. An interactive version of the guide will be available shortly.

https://www.fidh.org/en/issues/corruption/fidh-and-transparency-international-join-forces-to-tackle-corruption

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Exile is ‘a little bit less than death’ for Virginia Laparra forced to flee Guatemala

March 12, 2025

On 5 March 2025 Haroon Siddique in the Guardian wrote about Virginia Laparra, a Guatemalan anti-corruption prosecutor, who spent two years in prison after reporting her suspicion that a judge leaked sealed details of a case. She was forced into exile after being pursued by the country’s conservative elite.

In January last year, she was released under house arrest but in July was jailed for five years for another charge relating to her work. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/01/04/virginia-laparra-former-impunity-prosecutor-in-guatemala-released/]

Facing the prospect of going back to prison and further charges, Laparra left her two daughters behind to seek asylum across the border in Mexico.

In an interview with the Guardian in London after receiving the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk’s Sir Henry Brooke award honouring human rights defenders, Laparra said: “Nobody goes into exile voluntarily. Exile is the only thing left when nothing else has worked, it’s the only thing you’ve got left to defend your life and your freedom.

Protesters in Guatemala City demand the release of Virginia Laparra. ‘This is a political dispute, not a legal one,’ said a member of her defence team.

“Exile is just little bit different, a little bit less than death. [Your persecutors] take everything from you, take away your family, your children, your parents, your house, your way of life, your friends.’

Laparra headed a special prosecutor’s office working alongside the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), a UN anti-corruption mission that was controversially expelled in September 2019 by the then president, Jimmy Morales. Widespread reprisals followed against those who had worked with Cicig.

When Laparra was taken taken into preventive detention, she said it was as “if I were the worst drugs trafficker in Guatemala. When we drove out of the underground parking in my building there were soldiers, the police, hooded, with heavy weapons on both sides of the street. It was like in a film.”

She spent her first five months in solitary confinement in a windowless 2.5 sq meter cell in a high security jail in Guatemala City, 200 miles away from her Quetzaltenango home, and allowed out for only one hour a day.

She also endured bleeding to the womb in prison but waited months for treatment. Laparra eventually had a hysterectomy and four subsequent operations, during which she said police surrounded “the hospital, the gynaecology area, the operation room, and I had on each side of my bed a member of the police”.

She was later transferred to Matamoros prison, another notorious facility where drug traffickers and gang leaders are held, after she angered the authorities by speaking to a journalist. “My idea was that at least if I’m going to die [in jail], let’s make sure the world knows what happened,” said Laparra.

She considered pleading guilty in the hope that she might be released as both her sentences were commutable, which in Guatemala usually means no jail time is served, but her daughters told her: “Don’t do that, you’ve been here too long to give up now.”

When things reached their lowest ebb, Laparra said she decided to kill herself before remembering the promise she made to her daughters each time they visited – that she would be there the next time they came.

After her release on house arrest last year, she received an award from Guatemala’s current progressive president, Bernardo Arévalo, a surprise victor in the 2023 election. But Laparra believes the award only inflamed the pursuit of her by the public prosecutor’s office led by the attorney general, María Consuelo Porras, who had also tried to stop Arévalo from taking office.

Porras, who has pursued many other anti-corruption prosecutors and judges, also forced into exile her predecessor as attorney general and has been sanctioned by the US for corruption and the Council of the European Union for undermining democracy.

The Fund for Global Human Rights, which nominated Laparra for the Sir Henry Brooke award, and Amnesty International, which named her as a prisoner of conscience in 2022, said they were “deeply concerned about the systematic pattern of criminalisation imposed by the Guatemalan judiciary and the public prosecutor’s office against former judges, prosecutors, human rights defenders and journalists who have worked tirelessly for years to fight impunity and corruption in the country”.

Laparra says she feels proud to have received the award but adds that her persecutors reacted to the news with anger online. “I thought that it wasn’t possible to keep hate burning for so long,” she said. “Surely, two years in prison would have been enough for them, I thought, but it wasn’t.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/05/virginia-laparra-lawyer-guatemala

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Virginia Laparra, former impunity prosecutor in Guatemala, released

January 4, 2024

Following the decision of a judge in Guatemala City to authorize the immediate release of Virginia Laparra, former prosecutor of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI) on Tuesday, 3 January, Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International, said: 

“Virginia Laparra should never have spent a day in jail. It’s great news that she can be reunited with her loved ones after nearly two years as a prisoner of conscience. Her release is a first step towards ending the terrible human rights violations she has faced in retaliation for her outstanding work as an anti-corruption prosecutor.” 

“We lament, however, that Virginia Laparra remains convicted of a crime she did not commit and faces another unfounded trial, due to the regrettable use of criminalization against dozens of people who, like her, have led the fight against impunity. Amnesty International reiterates its call for the Guatemalan authorities to put an immediate end to the misuse of the criminal justice system to harass, intimidate and punish judges, prosecutors, human rights defenders and journalists”.

On 28 November 2022, Amnesty International named the former prosecutor as a prisoner of conscience, having found that her detention was solely due to her human rights work as head of FECI in Quetzaltenango, and requested her immediate and unconditional release. In May 2023, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared that the detention of the former anti-corruption prosecutor was arbitrary and requested her immediate release. At the same time, the international mobilization of thousands of human rights activists on the case has not ceased. 

“Amnesty International underscores the importance of international pressure in cases such as those of Virginia Laparra. Our movement in the Americas and around the world has not rested in demanding the release of the former prosecutor,” said Ana Piquer.

The unfounded criminal prosecution against Virginia Laparra took place in a context of attacks against dozens of people for their role in the investigation of high-profile cases of large-scale corruption and human rights violations. In 2022, there were 3,754 attacks against human rights defenders and at least 73 judicial workers, journalists and activists had to go into exile, according to data from Guatemala’s Human Rights Defenders Protection Unit (UDEFEGUA).

see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/05/10/guatemalan-lawyer-claudia-gonzalez-orellana-laureate-lawyers-for-lawyers-award-2023-ceremony-on-line-11-may/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/

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Call for applications for the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism

May 10, 2022

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism was launched on 16 October 2020 as a tribute to the Maltese anti-corruption investigative journalist and blogger who was assassinated in a car bomb attack in 2017. [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/ea7f958d-a957-4495-9ab4-9550741a8a58]

The Prize, with the support of the European Parliament, will be awarded annually to in-depth journalism pieces undertaken by EU-based professional journalists. The Prize is open to individual professional journalists or teams of professional journalists of any nationality. Applications may be submitted by authors themselves or by professional media organisations and associations on their behalf.

Applications must be submitted via the online platform by  31 July 2022, 12 AM (CEST).

The Prize aims to recognise outstanding in-depth journalism work on topics that are relevant for the European Union (EU) as a whole or some of its Member States, and contribute to the promotion of principles and values of the EU, as enshrined in the European Charter of Human Rights

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/pt/press-room/20220502IPR28408/premio-de-jornalismo-d-caruana-galizia-convite-a-apresentacao-de-candidaturas

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In Tajikistan lawyers have to be human rights defenders

September 29, 2019
In June, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared the detention of Buzurgmehr Yorov a violation of international law.
In June, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared the detention of Buzurgmehr Yorov a violation of international law.

For more than five years now, lawyers’ ranks have been thinned as the Tajik authorities imposed new rules to disbar lawyers and, in some cases, brought criminal cases against lawyers who defended political opponents. According to RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, known locally as Ozodi, there are only around 850 lawyers in Tajikistan, a country of more than 9 million people. Yorov’s situation is one of the best-known. He had taken on clients who were almost surely targeted by the government. In 2015, Tajik authorities withdrew the registration of and then banned the country’s leading opposition party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), then later declared it an extremist group and claimed it was behind what the government said was a coup attempt. There is scant evidence to support the claim of an attempted coup and even less evidence connecting the IRPT to the purported coup’s alleged mastermind, who was killed by Tajik security forces. More than a dozen senior IRPT leaders were detained at the end of September 2015. Yorov said he would defend them in court, meeting with one of them on September 26. Two days later, he said publicly that his client was being tortured; shortly after that, Yorov was himself taken into custody.

In October 2016, Yorov and fellow rights lawyer Nuriddin Makhamov were found guilty of fraud and inciting national, racial, local, or religious hatred. Yorov was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but additional time was added to his sentence in two successive trials. At one of those trials, Yorov was given two extra years for contempt of court for quoting 11th-century poet Ibn Avicenna.*

On September 18, the Association of Central Asian Migrants announced Yorov was being given the first Fayziniso Vohidova award. The prize is named after a rights lawyer who died earlier this year. Yorov’s brother, Jamshed, accepted the award on his behalf. Buzurgmehr Yorov has since been shortlisted for the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize, whose winner should be announced on September 30. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/08/29/ilham-tohti-one-of-the-finalists-for-the-vaclav-havel-human-rights-prize/]

A September 10 statement by the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists expressed concern about the Tajik Anti-Corruption Agency’s “acts of intimidation” against a group of lawyers. The statement mentions Abdulaziz Abdurahmonzoda, a member of the independent Lawyers Union of Tajikistan.

Abdurahmonzoda is being charged with fraud. Prosecutors allege that he demanded a $500 bribe from a man named Saidmurod Saidov, who came seeking Abdurahmonzoda’s legal services.

Abdulaziz Abdurahmonzoda
Abdulaziz Abdurahmonzoda

According to the International Commission of Jurists, “Following the initiation of the inquiry of the allegations of ill-treatment, the head of the Anti-Corruption Agency of Dushanbe allegedly sent requests to a number of district courts of Dushanbe to obtain information about civil and criminal cases in which Saidbek Nuriddinov had participated as a lawyer.” Saidbek Nuriddinov is the chairman of the Lawyers Union of Tajikistan.

In 2013, Yorov, Fakhriddin Zokirov, Ishoq Tabarov, and Shukrat Kudratov were the defense attorneys for Zayd Saidov, a successful and former minister of industry who suddenly faced charges ranging from financial crimes to sexual relations with a minor and polygamy, after he declared earlier in the year that he planned to establish a new political party. In December 2013, Saidov was found guilty and sentenced to 26 years in prison (three more years were added in a later trial).

In June, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared the detention of Buzurgmehr Yorov a violation of international law. Rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Freedom Now, and Lawyers for Lawyers have repeatedly called for an end to the crackdown on lawyers in Tajikistan and the release of those who have been imprisoned.

https://www.rferl.org/a/finally-a-defense-of-tajikistan-s-lawyers/30185435.html

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Prosecutor Thuli Madonsela in film Whispering Truth to Power

August 12, 2019
An award-winning documentary following Thuli Madonsela’s time as Public Protector has officially been released. The film focuses mostly on Madonsela’s last year in office and is called Whispering Truth to Power.
Behind-the-scenes footage shows Madonsela’s fight for justice for ordinary South Africans. As Public Protector for South Africa, Thuli Madonsela made an impact. The film has won the Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs, a collection of awards at FESPACO, Luxor African Film Festival and Jozi Film Festival.
Madonsela has become a celebrated name for many in South Africa, after she managed to successfully challenge former SA President, Jacob Zuma, on his illegal use of state funds. “In other countries, people don’t know who the ombudsman is,” Madonsela’s son, Wantu explains, “If the government is doing their job properly, then the ombudsman is not this celebrated figure who is fighting the good fight, because there shouldn’t be that fight.” The documentary is filmmaker, Shameela Seedat’s first ever release. The documentary on Madonsela is available to stream at Showmax.
Read more: https://briefly.co.za/35068-award-winning-documentary-thuli-madonsela-officially-out.html

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More on Maxence Melo, a winner of the 2019 Press Freedom Award

July 22, 2019

Digital activist Maxence Melo. (Daniel Hayduk, AFP, File)

Digital activist Maxence Melo. (Daniel Hayduk, AFP, File)
A Tanzanian journalist awarded the International Press Freedom Award on 16 July [see https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/07/17/international-press-freedom-awards-2019/] said he hoped the recognition will “lift the corner of the veil” on the plight of reporters in his homeland reported News24 on 17 July 2019. Maxence Melo, a blogger whose critical writings of President John Magufuli have landed him in hot water.
The CPJ said the co-founder of the Jamii Forums blog in 2006, was a “champion of online freedom of expression” who never flinched, even in the face of Tanzania’s strict internet laws. Melo has been in court more than 80 times, the CPJ said, and is still facing prosecution for refusing to disclose his sources in a story criticising Tanzanian authorities. His work focuses on corruption, tax evasion and human rights violations.

Melo said he hoped the award would turn the spotlight on the exceptional difficulties faced by journalists in Tanzania. “This prize lifts a corner of the veil on what is happening in our country,” said Melo, who is barred from leaving Tanzania’s financial capital and biggest city, Dar es Salaam. “Never before in our country has a government violated press freedom so much.”

“It is of course not good news that my country is making the headlines because of its laws and practices that violate freedoms of the press and expression,” Melo said. “With the announcement of this award, I think the international community will take a greater interest in what is happening in Tanzania, in the difficult environment in which the media and human rights defenders work in Tanzania.” Melo, a father of three, said he had received death threats. “It is obvious that I am afraid, afraid for my personal safety, but also for the safety of my family,” he said.

In 2015, the East African country was 75th in the world in RSF’s press freedom rankings. By 2019, it had slid to 118th.

https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/tanzanian-press-champion-hopes-prize-lifts-veil-on-abuses-20190717

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Nigerian NGO writes open letter to new President Muhammadu Buhari

May 29, 2019

On 29 May, 2019 Kolawole Oluwadare, Deputy Director of the NGO SERAP wrote to Buhari to request “To Make Every Day Of The Remainder Of Your Stay In Aso Rock A Rule Of Law Day”.

Re: Request To Make Every Day Of The Remainder Of Your Stay In Aso Rock A Rule Of Law Day’

Your Excellency,

Ahead of your inauguration and the start of your second term in office today, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) is writing to urge you to publicly commit to making every day of the remainder of your stay in Aso Rock a ‘Rule of Law’ day, including by ensuring every segment of your government’s daily operations is lawful and rule-of-law compliant, for the sake of fairness, justice, your legacy as president, and the success of your anti-corruption agenda, which has remained stuck in limbo principally because of persistent disobedience of decisions of Nigerian courts.

SERAP is a non-profit, nonpartisan, legal and advocacy organization devoted to promoting transparency, accountability and respect for socio-economic rights in Nigeria. SERAP received the Wole Soyinka Anti-Corruption Defender Award in 2014. …..The deficits in the rule of law have been particularly notable in three areas: failure to obey decisions of Nigerian courts, failure to push for transparency in asset declarations by high-ranking government officials and failure to push for unexplained wealth orders against former presidents and former governors and other senior public officials suspected of living on proceeds of corruption and ‘dirty money’.

…..Another court order that is yet to be complied with is the order for the release of Islamic Movement of Nigeria leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenah, from unlawful detention, obtained by human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana. Persistent disobedience of decisions of our courts by the government has opened the way for many state governors to do the same within their states including by using anti-media laws to suppress the civic space, target journalists and human rights defenders, grant to themselves pensions for life and commit grand corruption and other appalling atrocities……Ignoring or refusing to obey decisions of our courts is implicitly rendering the judiciary powerless to enforce constitutional and legal rights, violating separation of powers, undermining the rule of law, and ultimately, raising serious question marks on the government’s commitment to fight grand corruption…

Democracy is an inherent element of the rule of law, and obeying decisions of the courts, pushing for transparency of high-ranking government officials and going after former senior officials suspected of living on proceeds of corruption and ‘dirty money’ are closely connected with the existence and consolidation of democracy, good governance and development.

SERAP therefore urges you to use the opportunity of your second term to begin to implement your oft-expressed commitment to the rule of law by immediately obeying decisions of Nigerian courts, promoting transparency in asset declarations by publishing widely details of your assets declaration, encouraging Vice-President Professor Yemi Osinbajo to do the same and instructing all your ministers to publish their asset declarations.

SERAP also urges you to immediately instruct your next Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice to pursue unexplained wealths court orders against all former presidents (and their estates), former governors, former presidents of the Senate and former speakers of the House of Representatives aimed at forcing those of them suspected of living on proceeds of corruption and ‘dirty money’ to reveal sources of their fortune or risk forfeiting it.

https://www.modernghana.com/news/935530/re-request-to-make-every-day-of-the-remainder-of-your-stay.html

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Uganda: Killing of human rights defender Erasmus Irumba by security forces

June 30, 2017

 reports that on 23 June 2017, Erasmus Irumba was shot and wounded during an alleged altercation with a commanding officer of the local Uganda People’s Defence Forces and other security officials in Ntoroko District, western Uganda. He was then driven to a more rural area where he was shot again at close range and killed. Erasmus Irumba <https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/erasmus-irumba>  was the coordinator of Twerwaneho Listeners Club (TLC) in Ntoroko District. TLC is a non-governmental organisation based in Fort Portal, in western Uganda. TLC carries out human rights advocacy through weekly radio programmes centred on human rights education, capacity building of human rights defenders, civic education, the monitoring and documentation of human rights violations and the challenging of unlawful government actions in court. TLC radio programmes generally aim at holding public leaders and corporations more accountable. Erasmus Irumba was particularly active in TLC’s Village Budget Clubs, a project that sought to scrutinise the allocation and implementation of district budgets and ensure proper management of public funds at the local level.

[On 23 June 2017, at approximately 7.30pm, Erasmus Irumba was reportedly summoned to go to Butungama trading centre for a meeting with senior security officials in his region, including the Commanding Officer Lt. Col. Richard Muhangi of Uganda People’s Defence Forces 3rd Mountain Battalion, with two of his escorts, the Ntoroko District Police Commander and the District Internal Security Organ Officer. During this meeting, Erasmus Irumba and another civilian who was with him were shot in the leg in an altercation that has been this far presented as arising from his attempt to resist arrest. Whilst still alive, but severely bleeding, Erasmus Irumba and his colleague were put in the boot of a private car and driven to a more rural area where they were shot dead. Erasmus Irumba’s body, which presented a gun wound in the forehead, was later taken to Buhinga Regional Referral Hospital in Fort Portal. In response to the killings, it is reported that some senior security officials including Lt. Col. Richard Muhangi and the Ntoroko District Police Commander have been arrested.]

Front Line Defenders is concerned that the killing of Erasmus Irumba is linked to the corruption of the security officials involved and believes he was targeted due to his peaceful and legitimate work at TLC.

 

 

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Fritt Ord and ZEIT awards to Eastern European media: Elena Milashina, Seymour Hazi and Nashi Groshi

May 13, 2016

Fritt Ord and ZEIT-Stiftung have given their 2016 awards to: Read the rest of this entry »

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