What we must know about right to information

Kwame Mensah, author

“A society that is not well informed is not a society that is truly free.” ---Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 1985

Ghana is preparing to enact a Right to Information (RTI) Law. Last month Parliament gave the first reading of the draft and referred it to a Joint Committee on constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs and Communication. Currently, the Joint Committee has invited the general public to submit memoranda on the Bill. Also, according to the Majority leader and the Public Affairs directorate of Parliament, there will be extensive national and local consultations to enhance civic participation in the legislative process leading to the passage of the RTI Bill. Civil society organizations, including the media, Ghana National Coalition on the Right to Information and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, have been active in demonstrating their interest in the development and passage of an effective and credible RTI Law. All this is important because the Right to Information is a unique fundamental human right. It is the pivot of all other civic, political, social, economic and cultural rights of citizens. According to the United Nations, Right to Information is the touchstone of all rights. Hence it is vital for us all to know and understand the basic tenets of a good Right to Information law. In 2000, the United Nations, through its Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression endorsed a set of principles on Right to Information. These principles provide the minimum criteria for a credible Right to Information Law.

1. Maximum Disclosure
According to the principle of Maximum Disclosure, public bodies are obliged to disclose official information and every member of the public has a corresponding right to receive information, regardless of the form in which they are stored. All government agencies are mandated to release information relating to their work and make it available to the public. This disclosure of information must not be hindered by the form of the information.

2. Obligation to publish
This principle means that public bodies should publish and widely disseminate documents of considerable public interest. For example it is the interest of the public to know the roles, responsibilities and performance of a particular public agency. That agency is obliged to publish and widely distribute this information.

3. Promotion of open government
A good Right to Information law must promote an open system of government. It should deal with the culture of secrecy among public and civil service officers and enhance transparency in governance.

4. Limited scope of exemptions
If there is a need to exempt any information from disclosure, this must be based on legal provisions. Exemptions should not be to protect the government from exposure of wrongdoing. There must be a clearly specified narrow list of well defined exemptions. The rule is to disclose information, non-disclosure is the exception.

5. Process to facilitate access
According to the UN Principles on Right to Information, “all public bodies should be required to establish open, accessible internal systems for ensuring the public's right to receive information.” This is because, without an effective internal information infrastructure in an organization, it would be very difficult to generate manage and disseminate information to those who request for it.

6. Costs
The purpose the RTI law is to make official information available and accessible to the public. Therefore, if at all there must be any cost to be borne by the requester, this must be minimal. Otherwise people will be deterred by the cost and the purpose of the law will be compromised. In some jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, the state bears the cost of information retrieval for a maximum number of hours, above which the excess cost is borne by the requester.

7. Open meetings
A good Right to Information law is expected to establish the presumption that all meetings of public bodies are opened to the public. This assumption promotes transparency and motivates public officers to be more accountable to the public.

8. Disclosure takes precedence
This principle seeks to ensure that the provisions of the Right to Information Law are not undermined by other laws. It establishes that there can be no further exemptions to disclosure under any other law. Once an information is not clearly listed as exempt in the RTI law, it is to be made available to the public, without any hindrance from the provisions of another law. The RTI provisions on disclosure take precedence over any other law.

9. Protection for whistle blowers
Individuals should be protected from any legal, administrative or employment-related sanctions for releasing information on wrongdoing.

Conclusion
If we are really honest about enacting an effective and credible Right to Information Law, that meets the information needs of our society, especially the needs of vulnerable and excluded groups such as women, children and minorities, then we have need to ensure that Ghana's Right to Information Law adheres to the above tenets. I encourage Parliament to work transparently in their consultations with the public and experts in the field so that what eventually come out as our RTI law meets internationally acceptable standards.

Reference: Our Rights, our information: a publication by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative

Credit: E. Kwame Mensah
[Right-based Development Journalist and member of the Right to Information Coalition]

[email protected]