Source: hro.org (info), 15/11/10

· Human Rights Defenders · Moscow Region and Moscow City


The first issue of a new bulletin of news and analysis has been published: Corruption and Violations of Human Rights. The initiators and authors of the bulletin are the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights and Transparency International-Russia. The project's initiators are convinced that a significant number of cases of human rights violations by government agencies or officials, including large scale criminal practices, have a basis in corruption and are made possible because of the manner in which the formulations used in legislation and regulations fail to exclude corrupt practices.

Often corruption is also the cause of violations of human rights at the stage of investigation into a case. The authors and editors of the bulletin have set themselves a number of tasks: investigating the extent of corruption and the means by which corruption influences the human rights situation; expanding public debate on these issues; uniting the efforts of various groups of experts on fighting corruption and protecting human rights; and developing joint recommendations to civil society institutions and government.

The bulletin Corruption and Violations of Human Rights is intended to provide experts, civil society activists and the authorities with independently gathered data, opinions, and information about activities and trends in combating corruption and protecting human rights.

The bulletin will be published monthly and distributed in an electronic version via e-mail, with a subscription facility. Editor-in-chief of the bulletin is Andrei Kalikh of the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights.

The bulletin will have three main sections: news (a summary of data related to corruption, media monitoring); opinion and analysis (evaluations, quotations and comments by experts and practitioners in the field of combating corruption and protecting human rights, including government officials and international experts); and research (information on current research, reports, articles and reviews).

To subscribe to the bulletin, please e-mail: CHR.bulletin@gmail.com

The bulletin’s materials will be published on the website of Transparency International-Russia, and the website of the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights.

The editorial board invites human rights organizations, experts, lawyers, specialists in the field of combating corruption, and all those for whom this issue is important, to collaborate in the compilation of the bulletin.

The editors request that materials of the following kinds be sent to them: descriptions of incidences of corruption where in one way or another human rights violations are involved; information about criminal investigations; information about initiatives to fight corruption in the regions; information about relevant changes to legislation and about new initiatives at the grassroots; and, of course, relevant materials from the media.