তথ্য অধিকার আইন

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

The Daily Star, Wednesday Jun 15, 2022

Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz

As authoritarianism creeps in across the world, the ideals of participatory democracy and representative governance have taken a back seat once again in many countries. Since the end of World War II more than seven decades ago, the scope for people’s participation in the affairs of the state has waxed and waned, in countries old and new – and now it seems to be receding again.

The incredible devastation and human suffering caused by the war sparked the quick generation of international principles, norms and standards, in which people were put at the centre of all visions for a new world. International legal instruments sprang up, in which the rights and welfare of the people were the main focus. Soon these were relayed into national laws…Read More