International access developments

By David Banisar

The past year was a positive one for freedom of information around the world. A number of countries approved laws and many others began the process of drafting and adopting them. Today, there are now nearly 40 countries with FOI laws.

Regionally, there have many countries advancing toward laws for anti-corruption and freedom of press efforts. In Asia, a number of countries are following the lead of Japan and Thailand, including Indonesia, India, Nepal, and Mongolia. In Pakistan, the military government recently proposed a code of access.

More gradually, many African nations also are debating the adoption of access laws. In January 2000, South Africa became the first in that region to adopt an FOI law. There are now well-developed efforts in Kenya and Nigeria. Journalist groups also are leading such efforts in Uganda, Tanzania, and Namibia.

In Latin America, many countries have constitutional rights to access but they have been adopting laws more slowly.

Finally in Europe, there have been developments both on the international and at the national government levels. Unfortunately, the European Union has promoted restrictions on access to records held by EU organizations. On the national level, there is more positive news. After 20 years, the United Kingdom finally has an FOI law. There also are efforts to adopt laws in Switzerland and Germany. Many countries in Eastern and Central Europe are following the lead of Hungary and the Czech Republic: All of the Baltic nations now have acts; Slovakia and Bulgaria adopted acts in the past year; and Poland, Georgia, Moldova, Albania and Bosnia are also considering acts.

There also have been developments in the substance of the laws. One of the most interesting is the inclusion of a "public interest test" found in the new U.K. act and in the pending Bosnian bill. This provision requires that information or materials otherwise found to be exempt may be released if "public benefit in knowing the information outweighs any harm that may be caused from disclosure."

Another interesting development is the growing trend toward extending FOI laws in countries to include non-governmental bodies such as companies and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) that receive public money to do public projects. This is frequently used to cover hospitals but could have broader affects.

There have also been new developments on oversight. The national Hungarian, and Canadian and German provincial models show a new trend of placing the national data protection authority also in charge of overseeing freedom of information. The new U.K. and Estonian laws include this provision, too. It remains to be seen if these countries will be given sufficient resources to enforce the laws.

An electronic version of this report, containing more details on freedom of information laws from around the world, is available on the Privacy International Web site. http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/foia/

David Banisar, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area specializing in information issues, is deputy director of Privacy International, based in the United Kingdom, and counsel to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (http://trac.syr.edu).