We bring together information on the legal frameworks for the right to information from more than 100 countries.
 
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The Right to Information: Good Law and Practice

About Us

Right2INFO.org brings together information on the constitutional and legal framework for the right of access to information as well case law from more than 80 countries, organized and analyzed by topic. With a focus on good law and practice, the website  provides comparative overviews of, as well as country summaries illustrating, the current state of the right to information held by governments and bodies that perform public functions or operate with public funds. Experts from dozens of countries have contributed material and have indicated their willingness to correct, update and comment on the material posted. This website was launched in 2008 by the Open Society Justice Initiative. Access Info Europe designed the logo and contributed the section on Information  Commissioners and much of the information about laws and practice in Europe.

This website aims to advance the right to information by:

  • enabling right to information (RTI) advocates around the world to share with each other information and analysis, including about case decisions, legislative provisions and reasoning for decisions taken;
  • promoting the development of jurisprudence at the national and regional levels;
  • promoting the adoption and reform of laws, regulations and implementing mechanisms.

Right2INFO.org presents good law and practice that could be helpful to advocates seeking to promote the right to information. We also refer to laws and practices that are clearly less than “good,” given that knowledge of these deficient models often is useful for effective advocacy or argumentation.

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Editors

The Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational program of the Open Society Foundations, combines litigation, legal advocacy, technical assistance, and the dissemination of knowledge to secure advances in the following priority areas: freedom of information and expression, national criminal justice, international justice, and equality and citizenship. The Freedom of Information Program promotes the right to information as integral to an open society, participatory democracy and the promotion and protection of other human rights. We work closely with other programs in the OSI network and with national and international NGOs and academic institutions to build the capacity of civil society organizations and assist in the development of sustainable national programs for defending and promoting freedom of information and expression. We are currently working on projects in Europe, Africa and Latin America, and are beginning to develop projects in Asia. Program staff are Sandra Coliver, Darian Pavli, Emi MacLean, Carolyn O'Neil, and Merit Ulvik.

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Partners

Right2INFO.org aims to complement other websites. We are collaborating with www.freedominfo.org, www.foiadvocates.net and www.access-info.org to devise the most efficient ways to refer users to material on other websites and to minimize duplication while ensuring that essential categories of information – such as examples of successful uses of RTI laws – are effectively presented and cross-referenced. We also cooperate with and have benefited from the pro bono help of Ropes & Gray LLP lawyers, the students and supervisors of Harvard Law and International Development Society and the lawyers of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

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Contributors

This website relies on information provided by experts and organizations around the worldFollowing is a list of our main contributors, organized by country and thematic areas. We are grateful for all of these contributions. Please let us know if we inadvertently left you off the list.

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Africa and Middle East

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Americas and the Caribbean

The initial information has been supplemented by the following contributors from Latin America:

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Asia and Pacific Islands

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Europe

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Thematic Contributions

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Cases

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International and Regional Law

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Country Information

Right2INFO.org information is organized by topic rather than by country. The best way to search for country information is to type the country’s name into the search engine.  We invite our readers to consult the following websites, among others:

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Send Us Information

This website is a work in progress and is by no means complete. The website is based on contributions from experts and activists in dozens of countries, and we invite all of you, our readers, to help us by sending corrections, updates and new materials. We are interested in adding more information both about how laws are supposed to operate and, especially, how they operate in fact, and also case decisions. We continue to collect information about the reasons that governments, legislators and other policy makers have adopted various approaches to accessing information, understanding that reasoning behind the decisions is often what is most persuasive across borders.

We welcome your corrections, comments and additions. If you contact us, let us know if we may share your email addresses with others who may be interested in the information you sent us or other information about the right to information in your country.

We are especially interested in receiving links, electronic versions or hard copies of current versions and translations (especially in English, French, Spanish and Arabic) of legislation relevant to the right to information. See our current Links to Legislation page. Please also send full citations and links to cases and other sources mentioned in the text as well as new material, including articles, which we could upload or link to the site, and links to useful websites which we could add to our annotated list of web resources.

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[1] The countries surveyed are Albania, Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Romania.