Public Procurement and Human Rights: Opportunities, Risks and Dilemmas for the State as Buyer. Olga Martin-Ortega and Claire Methven O’Brien Eds. (Book Review)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olabisi D. Akinkugbe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
The State

scholarly journals Corrupt from the Head Down: Human Rights Impacts of Political Favouritism in Public Procurement

2021 ◽  
pp. 205-223
Author(s):  
Nika Arevadze
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
The State ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Systemic Analysis ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
Novel Approach

Public procurement represents a significant part of the global economy and influencesthe nature and quality of public goods and services. Consequently, it has substantial direct and indirectlinks with the human rights of a wide array of rightsholders. However, public procurement systemsrarely reflect these links and remain resistant to calls on human rights integration from internationalorganizations and academic scholarship. While this divergence is often discussed, the root governance issues that create the gap between public procurement and human rights and contribute to the lackof progress remain relatively unexplored. This paper investigates a prevalent governance issue inpublic procurement – political favouritist corruption schemes – and their role in the paradoxical lackof progress in aligning public procurement systems with human rights requirements. Through theanalysis of primary and secondary sources, the paper demonstrates the links between such corruptpractices and prevalent human rights issues in public procurement. It argues that by underminingpublic procurement systems, political favouritism jeopardizes primary economic and secondarysocial objectives of procurement and brings about adverse human rights impacts. These impactsharm civil and political, as well as economic, social and cultural human rights in national contextsand obstruct the development at large. Moreover, this corrupt arrangement represents a roadblockfor promoting human rights integration in public procurement and, hence, hampers the progressfor the novel approach of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in general, andits provisions concerning the state-business nexus in particular. The paper concludes by outliningthe need for further interdisciplinary and empirical research which will explore this issue throughthe lens of business and human rights, and offer a systemic analysis of root causes, the state of playand potential solutions.

Analysis of relations in the state sector of Russian public procurement

2018 ◽  
pp. 106-126
Author(s):  
O. V. Anchishkina
Keyword(s):  
Current Practice ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
The State ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
State Sector ◽  
Contractual Relations ◽  
State Organizations ◽  
State Organization ◽  
Negative Factors

The paper deals with a special sector of public procurement — G2G, in which state organizations act as both customers and suppliers. The analysis shows the convergence between contractual and administrative relations and risks of transferring the negative factors, responsible for market failures, into the administrative system, as well as the changing nature of the state organization. Budget losses in the sector G2G are revealed and estimated. There are doubts, whether the current practice of substitution of market-based instruments for administrative requirements is able to maintain integrity of public procurement in the situation of growing strategic challenges. Measures are proposed for the adjustment and privatization of contractual relations.

The Constitutional Principle of Accountability: A Study of Contemporary South African Case Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuks Okpaluba
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Principle ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Law ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Many

‘Accountability’ is one of the democratic values entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa, 1996. It is a value recognised throughout the Constitution and imposed upon the law-making organs of state, the Executive, the Judiciary and all public functionaries. This constitutional imperative is given pride of place among the other founding values: equality before the law, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. This study therefore sets out to investigate how the courts have grappled with the interpretation and application of the principle of accountability, the starting point being the relationship between accountability and judicial review. Therefore, in the exercise of its judicial review power, a court may enquire whether the failure of a public functionary to comply with a constitutional duty of accountability renders the decision made illegal, irrational or unreasonable. One of the many facets of the principle of accountability upon which this article dwells is to ascertain how the courts have deployed that expression in making the state and its agencies liable for the delictual wrongs committed against an individual in vindication of a breach of the individual’s constitutional right in the course of performing a public duty. Here, accountability and breach of public duty; the liability of the state for detaining illegal immigrants contrary to the prescripts of the law; the vicarious liability of the state for the criminal acts of the police and other law-enforcement officers (as in police rape cases and misuse of official firearms by police officers), and the liability of the state for delictual conduct in the context of public procurement are discussed. Having carefully analysed the available case law, this article concludes that no public functionary can brush aside the duty of accountability wherever it is imposed without being in breach of a vital constitutional mandate. Further, it is the constitutional duty of the courts, when called upon, to declare such act or conduct an infringement of the Constitution.

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