29 August 2007
Freedom of Information Laws Burgeoning Worldwide
Global “right-to-know” day is September 28
Washington -- The global growth of democracy and a desire to combat corruption have led to an explosion over the last decade in the enactment of national laws allowing citizens to gain access to public records.
Two experts on the subject told USINFO that more than 70 countries have enacted freedom of information laws worldwide with such measures aimed at encouraging transparency in government. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that "International Right-to-Know Day" is celebrated worldwide each year on September 28 “to recognize and promote the worldwide proliferation of government openness.” The date commemorates the 2002 establishment of Freedom of Information Advocates Network, created by information-freedom organizations from around the world.
The United States passed the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, becoming at the time one of the few countries in the world to provide a legal way in which any person or organization could ask for records held by federal government agencies. Similar laws have been enacted at the state level. (See related article.)
The U.S. law was passed when America’s citizens and its news media demanded better public access to government records related to the Vietnam War. Sweden has the world’s oldest such act, created some 200 years ago.
Meredith Fuchs, general counsel for George Washington University’s National Security Archive, said the worldwide growth in freedom of information laws stems from countries “trying to demonstrate that they have a more transparent and accountable system” for their citizens. Such laws also put countries on “better footing” as they seek to join organizations such as the European Union or other types of “country groupings,” she said.
Fuchs said the Inter-American Court of Human Rights decided in a groundbreaking case in 2006 involving Chile that the public had a “human right” to access information from its government, based on the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. The court found in favor of three environmental activists seeking information from the Chilean government about a controversial logging project.
Fuchs said she finds a number of flaws in the U.S. law, especially in a huge backup in the number of FOIA requests still to be processed. But she added that in certain aspects the U.S. law is the best such law worldwide because America has “an accepted culture of accountability” from U.S. agencies providing public records.
FOIA specialists in the various U.S. government agencies have gotten “better and better” in responding to the public’s requests for information, said Fuchs. She added that because of the strong U.S. democratic tradition, American citizens are willing to fight for their right to information through FOIA, whereas in some former dictatorships citizens remain reluctant to make requests for public information.
The U.S. Congress recently passed a reform bill that would create a type of FOIA “ombudsman” to mediate FOIA cases. The Open Government Act of 2007, which Fuchs said President Bush likely will sign, also would impose new requirements on federal agencies to increase the timeliness of their FOIA responses and establish new procedures for tracking FOIA requests so they do not become mired or lost in the federal bureaucracy.
POST-COLD WAR WAVE OF FOIAS
Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, agreed with Fuchs that the world has seen a “real post-Cold War wave of freedom of information laws.”
“Not all the laws are equally effective or entirely satisfactory, but they represent an acknowledgment that a public right to government information is a norm of democratic societies,” said Aftergood, who heads his organization’s Project on Government Secrecy.
Aftergood said that following the Cold War a “wave of democratization” occurred with countries worldwide seeking to develop democratic institutions where none had existed before, with one of those institutions being the adoption of a “freedom of information regime.”
Another factor in FOIA growth, said Aftergood, is that “ease of access to information has never been greater and that in turn has spawned an expectation of even greater access” to information. This has resulted in “self-reinforcing trends both politically and technologically that has made freedom of information a standard part of democratic governance,” he said.
Aftergood said he concurred that the United States has the world’s most “successful” FOIA law with regard to “setting the standard for what such a law can achieve.” The U.S. law includes nine categories of exemptions for withholding information that include national security, internal agency rules and law enforcement records.
One continuing challenge of FOIA, he said, is that demand continues to rise for public information while “resources have been level at best,” and that causes “increasing backlogs and growing delays in response time.”
Aftergood said the reform U.S. law that President Bush is expected to sign will make changes “that are not revolutionary but will improve the responsiveness of the FOIA system.”
More information about the case in Chile is available in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006, posted on the State Department’s Web site.
Additional FOIA information is available on the Web sites of the Department of Justice and the National Security Archive.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
