1 October 2003
Global Survey Shows Momentum for FOI Laws
30 September 2003
The global freedom-of-information (FOI) movement is gathering steam, with a growing number of governments around the world passing "right to know" laws in the past decade, according to a new survey commissioned for freedominfo.org, a global network of FOI organisations.
"More than 50 countries now have guaranteed their citizens the right to know what their government is up to, and more than half of these laws [have been] passed in the last decade," says the survey.
The new access-to-information laws, including seven in 2002 alone, have spawned a host of investigative articles on issues such as secret police surveillance in Mexico, radiation contamination in Australia and mercury poisoning in Japan, says the author of the survey, David Banisar.
The survey was launched on 28 September to mark the first annual International Right to Know Day. The world-wide event was initiated by the Freedom of Information Advocates (FOIA) Network, a virtual coalition of 34 organisations, including ARTICLE 19 and Journalists Against Corruption (Periodistas frente a la corrupción, PFC) [see Regional News Story #2 - PFC Celebrates Right to Know Day: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/53932/].
Read the survey: http://freedominfo.org/survey.htm
Find out more about the FOIA Network: http://www.aip-bg.org/~foianet/index.html
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