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Welcome

The Right to Information: Good Law and Practice

Welcome

Right2INFO.org brings together information on the constitutional and legal framework for the right of access to information as well case law from more than 80 countries, organized and analyzed by topic. With a focus on good law and practice, the website  provides comparative overviews of, as well as country summaries illustrating, the current state of the right to information held by governments and bodies that perform public functions or operate with public funds. Experts from dozens of countries have contributed material and have indicated their willingness to correct, update and comment on the material posted. The Justice Initiative has organized and intends to maintain this website, and, together with Access Info Europe, will continue to collect, analyze and upload information.

Objectives

This website aims to advance the right to information by:

  • enabling right to information (RTI) advocates around the world to share with each other information and analysis, including about case decisions, legislative provisions and reasoning for decisions taken;
  • promoting the development of jurisprudence at the national and regional levels;
  • promoting the adoption and reform of laws, regulations and implementing mechanisms.

Right2INFO.org presents good law and practice that could be helpful to advocates seeking to promote the right to information. On occasion we refer to laws and practices that are clearly less than “good,” on the ground that knowledge of these deficient models could be useful for effective advocacy or argumentation.

Right2INFO.org aims to complement other websites. We are collaborating with www.freedominfo.org, www.foiadvocates.net and www.access-info.org to devise the most efficient ways to refer users to material on other websites and to minimize duplication while ensuring that essential categories of information – such as examples of successful uses of RTI laws – are effectively presented and cross-referenced.

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Country Information

Right2INFO.org information is organized by topic rather than by country, although we are constructing country pages that will link to all the information about a particular country. In the meantime readers may use the search function.  We also present a list of links to comparative surveys and country information on the resources page. If we hear from users that they would like Right2INFO.org to include country overview pages, we will explore how best to do so with organizers of other relevant websites. In the meantime, we invite our readers to consult the following websites, among others:

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Links to Legislation

We recognize the importance of providing our users with links to current versions of relevant laws, constitutions and regulations and to official translations. Those of you who have searched for such information will appreciate how challenging the task is: links rapidly go out of date; governments often do not keep their own legislative websites up-to-date and only some include translations. Right2INFO.org includes a page with Links to Legislation, which we will update regularly. We would be grateful to hear from any readers who have information about updates or additions to this page.

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Send Us Information

This website is a work in progress and is by no means complete. The website is based on contributions from experts and activists in dozens of countries, and we invite all of you, our readers, to help us by sending corrections, updates and new materials. We are interested in adding more information both about how laws are supposed to operate and, especially, how they operate in fact, and also case decisions. We continue to collect information about the reasons that governments, legislators and other policy makers have adopted various approaches to accessing information, understanding that reasoning behind the decisions is often what is most persuasive across borders.

We welcome your corrections, comments and additions. If you contact us, let us know if we may share your email addresses with others who may be interested in the information you sent us or other information about the right to information in your country.

We are especially interested in receiving links, electronic versions or hard copies of current versions and translations (especially in English, French, Spanish and Arabic) of legislation relevant to the right to information. See our current Links to Legislation page. Please also send full citations and links to cases and other sources mentioned in the text as well as new material, including articles, which we could upload or link to the site, and links to useful websites which we could add to our annotated list of web resources.

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Editors

The Open Society Justice Initiative, www.justiceinitiative.org, an operational program of the Open Society Institute, combines litigation, legal advocacy, technical assistance, and the dissemination of knowledge to secure advances in the following priority areas: freedom of information and expression, national criminal justice, international justice, and equality and citizenship. The Freedom of Information Program promotes the right to information as integral to an open society, participatory democracy and the promotion and protection of other human rights. We work closely with other programs in the OSI network and with national and international NGOs and academic institutions to build the capacity of civil society organizations and assist in the development of sustainable national programs for defending and promoting freedom of information and expression. We are currently working on projects in Europe, Africa and Latin America, and are beginning to develop projects in Asia. Program staff are Sandra Coliver, Darian Pavli and Merit Ulvik. Nino Gobronidze is working with us for the year through August 2010 as a Law Fellow.

Access Info Europe, www.access-info.org,  is a human rights organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the right of access to information in Europe and contributing to the development of this right globally. Formed by European and international experts in access to information, Access Info promotes the right of access to information as a fundamental human right in and of itself, and as an instrumental right that is essential for participation in government decision-making, for holding governments accountable, and for defence of other human rights. Access Info defines the right of access to information to include both the right to request and receive information from public bodies, and to disseminate that information freely; the right also places an obligation on governments to publish information proactively. We assert that the right of access to information should apply to private bodies that perform public functions and/or operate with public funds, at least with regard to their public activities, as well as to private bodies that hold information necessary for the protection of other fundamental rights.  The Access Info team includes Helen Darbishire (Executive Director), Eva Moraga, Maria Jaraquemada and Adam Földes.

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Contributors

This website could not have been compiled without the substantial information provided by the following experts and organizations, many of whom completed detailed questionnaires about the relevant laws. If you have questions about any information on this website, we will be happy to forward the question to the appropriate country or thematic expert below. We have also provided links to their organizations’ websites, where available, in the event you would like to contact them directly. Of coure, we take responsibility for any errors we may have committed inadvertently in editing and summarizing the materials sent us. Following the first list – of people who provided substantial information to enable us to build the first iteration of this website – is a list of additional people who have contributed important information. We are grateful for all of your contributions – and please let us know if we inadvertently left you off the list.

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Latin America

The Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF) www.dplf.org is responsible for most of the information on this website concerning Latin American countries. Considerable information has been drawn from its study, Access to Judicial Information (2007), available at http://www.dplf.org/uploads/1195054937.pdf. The DPLF study was principally written by Montserrat Solano Carboni and Eduardo Bertoni of DPLF, based on information provided by the following country experts, including on their country’s overall access to information regimes:

  • Argentina: Roberto Saba, Martha Farmelo, and Mariela Belski, Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC), www.adc.org.ar
  • Chile: Moises Sanchez and Juan Pablo Olmedo, Fundación ProAcceso, www.proacceso.cl
  • Colombia: Nathalia Carolina Sandoval and Diana Esther Guzmán, DeJusticia, http://dejusticia.org
  • Dominican Republic: Carlos Pimentel, Participación Ciudadana, www.pciudadana.com
  • Ecuador: Christian Bahamonde
  • Honduras: ACI-Participa, www.aciparticipa.org
  • Mexico: Diana Hernández, LIMAC, http://www.limac.org.mx/
  • Panama: Andrés Pizarro Sotomayor, DPLF consultant
  • Peru: Kristina Aiello and Javier Casas, Instituto de Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), www.ipys.org 
  • Uruguay: Martin Prats, Instituto de Estudos Legales y Sociales del Uruguay (IELSUR), www.ielsur.org

 Other Contributors from Latin America:

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North America and the Caribbean

  • Canada: Paul Schabas, partner, Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, www.blakes.com/english/people/lawyers2.asp?LAS=PBS; Stanley Tromp, journalist and co-founder, British Columbia Journalists for Freedom of Information, http://www3.telus.net/index100/foi

  • Jamaica: Carolyn Gomes and Bianca Baldo, Jamaicans for Justice, www.jamaicansforjustice.org

  • United States: Kristin Adair and Meredith Fuchs, National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia.html; Prof Meg Satterthwaite and students, New York University Int’l Human Rights Law Clinic, http://www.law.nyu.edu/academics/clinics/semester/intlhumanrights/index.htm

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    Europe (Council of Europe member states)

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    Africa and Middle East

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    Asia and Pacific

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    Thematic Contributions

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    International and Regional Law

    • Council of Europe: Darian Pavli, Justice Initiative; Professor Wouter Hins, Constitutional and Administrative Law, University of Amsterdam, and Media Law, Leiden University, http://www.ivir.nl/staff/hins.html; and Professor Dirk Voorhof, University of Ghent, http://www.psw.ugent.be/dv/index.aspx        
    • European Union: Ulf Öberg, Managing Partner of Advokatfirman Öberg & Associés AB, www.obergassocies.eu; and Dr. Gunnar Persson, Öberg & Associés
    • International law: Toby Mendel, Article 19, Global Campaign for Freedom of Expression, www.article19.org, Alasdair Roberts, Suffolk University, http://www.aroberts.us
    • Organization of American States: Eduardo Bertoni, Director, Due Process of Law Foundation, www.dplf.org         

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    FOI Advocates

    We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of all of the members of FOI Advocates who sent us information about their countries and/or regions, including:

    If we inadvertently left you off the list, please remind us, and please accept our apologies. This list will be updated regularly.

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    [1] The countries surveyed are Albania, Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Romania

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