The Principle of Transparency in UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement and Iran’s Legal System and Its Role in Ensuring Citizenship Rights

Public procurement has a significant role in the economy of each country and its importance caused some international organizations such as UN, WTO, have also adopted regulations in this regard. In many studies, the principle of transparency is one of the key principles governing public procurement. Transparency means being aware of the decisions of public officials, which has been the legal attention in recent decades and has been considered a component of good governance, which has various dimensions. Transparency in public procurement means that information on the public procurement process must be available to everyone: contractors, suppliers, service providers and the public at large, unless there are valid and legal reasons to keep certain information confidential. This issue closely related to citizenship rights and is even mentioned in the Charter of Citizenship Rights as a right, because the cost of these purchases is covered by public funds and taxes and ultimately it is the citizens who benefit from these purchases and thus they need to know how to spend that money. The main issue in this paper is to examine the scope and examples of transparency in public procurement and its relationship to citizenship rights. The present study tries elaborating the issue, in the Iranian legal system and UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement. The study show that in the Iranian legal system, principle of transparency in public procurement in embodied in several codes. Overall since of inefficient rules and lack of effective sanctions, there is a need for comprehensive legal.