তথ্য অধিকার আইন

The Daily Star, Saturday October 15, 2022

Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz

Bangladesh is in the throes of election fever, even though the next general elections are more than a year away. There is fear that the situation may become more tense and heated than the previous two elections. One way to cool down and professionalise the atmosphere would be to make the elections more issue-based. They should be contests in which political parties explain their respective positions on critical national issues to the voting public. One such issue is governance and the commitment of those seeking to govern the country. Read More..

The Daily Star, Thursday September 15, 2022

Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz

September is the month for annual stocktaking of the Right to Information (RTI) regimes globally. The United Nations has designated September 28 as the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI). RTI enthusiasts all over the world use the occasion to bring focus on the revolutionary objectives of the law, discuss prospects and problems of implementation and identify strategies to overcome challenges encountered. Read More..

The Daily Star, Sunday August 14, 2022

Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz

Sri Lanka has been shaken by a socioeconomic and political crisis that has drawn international attention. We wanted to find out if the public outcry against Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government that led to its eventual overthrow was translated into increased RTI activity. It appears to be the case.

Unlike most other countries in the region, the 2016 Right to Information (RTI) Act of Sri Lanka attracted different strata of society, including its vigilant civil society organisations, from the very beginning. From early on, they put it to use to probe government activities of suspicious or dubious nature. Read More

The Daily Star, Thursday July 14, 2022

Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz

Over the last two decades, most of South Asia has adopted right to information (RTI) laws, also known as freedom of information (FOI) or access to information (A2I) laws. With a shared colonial past and a deeply-entrenched culture of official secrecy and unbridled exercise of government power over people, the countries in this region provide a unique opportunity to observe how a law that seeks to establish transparency and accountability in governance has fared in these common contexts. Having previously looked at the status of the RTI regimes in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, we turn today to Pakistan.

Pakistan is, in fact, the first country in South Asia to have adopted an RTI law – albeit as an ordinance by a military ruler, in 2002. However, it soon became evident that the government’s motivation in this regard was influenced more by donor pressure than serving public interest. The new law had no teeth to…Read More