Olga Martin-Ortega and Claire Methven O’Brien have edited an important book that centres the human rights questions arising from public procurement processes. Public procurement is susceptible to exploitation by private and public actors. The human rights implications of public procurement in the Global South and Global North have been left to the periphery of critical analysis. Yet, beyond enhancing the process of public procurement for accountability and transparency, the need to ask broader questions of other implications of the process, particularly on citizens, cannot be over-emphasized. The 14 chapters in Martin-Ortega and O’Brien’s edited book fill an important gap by undertaking an incisive and insightful analysis of the human rights implications of public procurement processes from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

The chapters in this book, authored by a diverse set of academics, professionals and legal practitioners, substantively interrogate public procurement and its interconnectedness to human rights. Over-arching themes include national, regional and international legal and institutional frameworks of procurement rules and their relationship with human rights, as well as public procurement practices based on the experiences of professionals and the role of empirical analyses in addressing the challenges that are posed.

The 14 substantive chapters are divided into four parts. Parts I and IV, the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’, respectively, were co-authored by Martin-Ortega and O’Brien. Part II, consisting of seven chapters, focuses on ‘Frameworks and Actors’, while Part III, consisting of six chapters, speaks to the broad theme of ‘Opportunities and Challenges: Insights from Practice’.Footnote ¹ For example, chapter 6, authored by Albert Sanchez-Graells, undertakes an analysis of the regulatory space for inclusion of considerations related to ‘core’ human rights guarantees in procurement in the European Union, as reflective of broader international inclination. Chapter 7, by Eamonn Conlon, interrogates civil liability for abuses of International Labour Organization core labour rights, focusing on Ireland as a case study. The analyses of the human rights aspects of public procurement and the overlap in the context of the actions of actors (States and international institutions) as well as the responsibilities of these actors towards the protection of human rights makes a welcome contribution to the field of study of business and human rights broadly speaking, and public procurement in particular.

Although all the chapters in the book offer insightful analysis in different contexts, this review focuses only on chapters 1, 3, 4, 5 and 14.Footnote ² These chapters have strong resonance for the public procurement regime in Global South countries, and together they raise important questions on the business and human rights as well as sustainable development linkages of public procurement. Specifically, the chapters imagine public procurement as a key aspect of the state-business nexus of Pillar 1 of the United Nations Framework and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and how this materializes in countries and international institutions.

Martin-Ortega and O’Brien’s Introduction offers a bird’s eye view of the rationale and conceptualization of the book. Martin-Ortega and O’Brien view ‘public buyers’ human rights duties [as] mandatory and thus [could] not be ranked within [traditional] procurement law frameworks as subordinate to price, competition …’. In other words, ‘public buyers’ duties, arising under international, regional, and national human rights instruments, and applied to the sphere of business regulation, render the protection of human rights distinct from other “social” or sustainable procurement objectives of a discretionary nature’. They analyse the procurement lens, human rights lens and contemporary concept of ‘sustainable public procurement’ as embedded in discourses of business and human rights and sustainable development goals. Sope Williams-Elegbe’s contribution examines human rights responsibilities in the context of public procurements that the World Bank financed. She problematizes and situates these human rights concerns in the context of the Procurement Framework and Regulations for Projects of 2016. She argues that human rights can be advanced in this category of financing in three ways: based on Bank rules permitting sustainability criteria in funded contracts; the supervision of the procurement process; and the use of sanctions processes by the Bank to enforce human rights compliance in funded contracts. Deborah Rossu’s contribution decries the lack of provisions that addresses the responsibilities of international organizations as procurers in the UNGPs and the Draft BHR Treaty. Rossu therefore analyses the existing responsibilities of international organizations (IOs) and their member states with respect to the protection of human rights both from theoretical and practical points of departure that are grounded in UNICEF as a case study. International organizations and member states share the responsibility to prevent and remedy abuses based on the elaboration of protective norms and polices. Rossu contends that states should strive to ensure that the procurement activities of IOs are in line with the standards appliable to their own public procurement. Geo Quinot’s contribution ‘analyses the South African experience of designing a public procurement framework geared towards the pursuit of human rights’ and draws lessons that may be useful to other developing countries that are inclined to linking human rights to procurement. Based on the analyses of relevant regulatory mechanisms that have been implemented in South Africa to insert the pursuit of equality as a human right into public procurement practice, Quinot argues that the South African ‘case aptly illustrates the trade-offs [and challenges] between economic and social considerations in public procurements’. The analyses in these chapters are indeed insightful and the breadth of coverage of international, institutional and country perspectives to illustrate the interconnectedness of human rights and public procurement is refreshing. Yet, the analyses leave one with questions in some areas.

First, while the substantive issues covered by the book are impressive, the geographical coverage is limited. While the challenge of navigating business and human rights overlap is universal, Global South countries and their citizens have borne the most impact of the violation of human rights and labour exploitation arising from the actions of transnational actors. Likewise, they have been at the receiving end of the manoeuvre of public procurement processes. As such, it would have been interesting to have some chapters that focus on the experiences of states in Latin America, the Caribbean and South Pacific to complement the analysis of the South African state.

Second, more substantively, a specific area that is not addressed in the book but remains critical for equitable and sustainable development in developing countries is the relationship between corruption and public procurement. The nexus between public procurement, human rights and corruption in the context of developing countries and the challenges that they birth has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing the conundrum in order to properly attribute responsibility or hold accountable actors that violate the human rights of citizens remains a challenge that public procurement must confront. The imperfection of procurement processes is heightened in developing African countries. The public health emergency nature of the COVID-19 pandemic means that State governments must proceed with urgent tenders in the interest of the public. In Africa, some of the public procurement processes for COVID-19 have raised not only corruption questions with potential disparate impact on vulnerable peoples. For example, in South Africa, despite the National Treasury’s emergency procurement regulations that were put in place for the purpose of the COVID-19 pandemic-related tenders, the process was still marred by corruption on a significant scale.Footnote ³ The social dimension of corruption is deeply rooted in the public sector of many African States.Footnote ⁴ Characterized by informal networks, capturing corruption in these networks remains a challenge for many African States.Footnote ⁵ The embedded nature of these formal and informal corrupt practices poses a unique dimension of challenges for human rights and public procurement in Africa.

Overall, this edited volume makes important contributions and opens the opportunity for scholars to build on and expand the growing body of scholarship that foregrounds the need for critical multidisciplinary inquiry into the scope and content of the obligations of states and IOs to protect human rights, as well as the plausibility of implementing these duties in practice.