The right to information is part of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a basic human right. It is vital to ensuring that societies everywhere have access to justice and accountability and key to strengthening other human rights as well as efforts to realise and enact other SDGs. It helps fight corruption and poverty and address crises in healthcare and the environment.
Today, over 91% of the world’s population lives in one of the over 130 countries with a right to information law or policy in place, while bills are pending in many other countries.
“As we mark the international Right to Know Day, we commend the governments that have enshrined the right to information into law, and the activists and journalists who have pushed for these efforts,” said Senior Legal Counsel & Head of Transparency David Banisar. “It’s important that we exercise our right to know often and with purpose, demanding to know the decisions officials are taking and why, holding them to account and pushing them to uphold the other UN goals. We call on governments to fully enable these laws.”
View the infographic reflecting progress made on right to information laws around the world