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Abstract: The United Nations Convention against Corruption (the UNCAC) and other transnational anti-corruption instruments place considerable emphasis on combating corruption through criminalisation and law enforcement. Yet the lack of successful prosecutions globally raises the question as to whether this is the most effective approach to combating corruption: in other words “Why prosecute corruption”? Using Anglophone African countries as the basis of the analysis, this article (1) reviews the key challenges in making the UNCAC criminalisation and law enforcement provisions effective and (2) critically analyses the role and effectiveness of the implementation review mechanisms in the UNCAC and other key international and regional anti-corruption conventions. The article concludes that, at present, the criminalisation and law enforcement provisions of limited effectiveness and that anticorruption policy should focus primarily on making greater use of civil remedies.
Keywords anti-corruption measures in Anglophone African countries; corruption-related offences; criminalisation and law enforcement; recourse to civil remedies; state parties’ obligation to implement review mechanisms; United Nations Convention against Corruption
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