Somaliupdate Online: Somali: Friday, September 29, 2017.
Fifteen years
ago today, civil society organisations decided to create International Right to
Know Day as a way of increasing public awareness of their fundamental human
right to information (RTI), and to pressure governments to make this right a
reality.
In that 15
years, there has been remarkable progress - the number of countries recognised
by the UN with either RTI laws or national regulations has more than doubled,
from 48 to 119. In just the past year, this has included countries from across
the world, such as Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Lebanon, Argentina, the Bahamas,
and East Timor. Over 40 other countries are currently considering similar
initiatives.
Of all the
regions, the Middle East and North Africa has been the most limited in their
progress. Today, in recognition of this, we are releasing analyses of the new
RTI law in Iran, which is slowly being implemented and the current bill going
through parliament in Morocco, which is attempting to make the right available
to all people in the country. We have also produced updated infographics, setting
out the status of the right to know around the world, and in each region.
There has
also been an enormous improvement in the recognition of RTI at the
international level. The recognition of the importance of this right in
enabling public participation and protecting other rights has grown from a few
references in international documents to a vast array of international and
regional treaties setting obligations to protect and enable RTI. This
culminated in the 2015 inclusion of access to information in the UN Sustainable
Development Goals, as a target in Goal 16 on "promoting peaceful and
inclusive societies, access to justice, and building effective, accountable and
inclusive institutions at all levels”. It commits all countries to, among other
things, take steps to ensure the public have access to information and are able
to full participate in decision-making, as well as to substantially reduce
corruption, by 2030.
In July 2017,
ARTICLE 19 released a report reviewing global progress towards achieving Goal
16, and examining how RTI improves sustainable development. The report contains
case studies on the use of RTI by communities to improve their access to other
rights, including the right to water, health, education, and improving gender
equality.
However, RTI
was not mentioned very much at the UN SDGs’ review body - the High Level
Political Forum (HLPF) - this year, either in the high level discussions or in
the countries’ Voluntary National Reviews, except in the cases of Kenya and
Brazil, where civil society made a concerted effort to include the issue in the
national reports or their unofficial civil society reports. The HLPF has
however agreed to review Goal 16 in 2019, including access to information.
Unfortunately,
the international bodies that set the standards that govern our lives have not
kept apace with improvements at the national level. A new report released this
week from David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and
Opinion, sharply criticizes the United Nations for not having an access to
information policy despite the fact a majority of its members do. Only a
handful of UN bodies, including UNESCO and UN Environment, have adopted
policies, however they still fall far short.
Nonetheless,
it is no longer inconceivable that we will soon see the day when the right to
information is recognised in the law of every country in the world, if not
fully implemented. If progress made over the past decade continues, this could
happen by 2030, if not sooner.
Happy Right
to Know Day!
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