ABSTRACT
While corruption—and particularly grand or high-level corruption—seems to be getting worse on several fronts, there is also more public and media attention to both its pervasiveness and detrimental impact on societies. Corruption and bribery sabotage public finance, slow private-sector development, advance inequality, and weaken government. However, an increasing number of citizens, national governments and international organisations are advocating to combat corruption. Greater transparency helps, as does less red tape, subsidy reform, improving budget processes, and implementing international agreements. Ultimately though, corruption is a global problem that will require a global solution. Corruption in recent decades has continued to flourish, even though 187 countries are party to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), and each has laws criminalising corrupt conduct. In order to fight corruption, some binding international judicial mechanism is necessary to prosecute individuals violating laws on corruption in those cases where the justice system and the state have been captured by corrupt elites which control the police, the judges and prosecutors and provide them with impunity. A free-standing International Anticorruption Court is a promising option worth considering. The authors explore what would be involved in setting up such a court.
