On Thursday, April 22nd, the
Committee on Juridicial and Political
Affairs (CAJP) of the OAS Permanent
Council held a special meeting on access
to public information. The purpose of
the meeting was to assess the progress made in
the region in compliance with the Inter-American
Program for Access to Public Information. The
session was held virtually in light of the
measures that have been put in place due to the
COVID 19 pandemic.
In his report to the
delegations, the Director of the
Department of International Law (DIL)
referred to the mandates that the General
Assembly, the Organization’s highest body, has
conferred to the DIL regarding access to public
information. Chief among them is to continue to
advance in the broad consultations on a
Model Law 2.0 and to present the
Inter-American Juridical Committee
(CJI) –the OAS consultative body in juridical
matters- with a comprehensive proposal to be in
turn presented to the Organization’s political
bodies.
The Director recounted the
nearly one and a half year long consultation
process, in which the focal points of the
Inter-American Program, the guarantor bodies in
the region, civil society and other social
actors offered valuable input on the areas in
which the 2010 Inter-American Model Law on
Access to Public Information could be updated to
become an instrument that gathers the lessons
learned and good practices developed in the last
decade, taking into account the available
normative and technological developments.
Likewise, he explained that,
based on all that input, the DIL prepared a
document that became the basis for the CJI’s
deliberations during its regular sessions held
in August 2019 and March 2020, after which the
CI approved the proposal that was sent to the
Permanent Council on March 25th.
Finally, the Director
indicated that several social actors working in
the protection and promotion of the right of
access to public information are eagerly
anticipating the approval of this proposal
during the upcoming OAS General Assembly. Among
those which have made this expectation known in
different fora are the guarantor bodies of the
region, the Network for Transparency and
Access to Public Information (Red de
Transparencia y Acceso a la Información) and the
Regional Alliance for Free Speech and
Information (Alianza Regional por la
Libre Expresión e Información), a network of
multiple NGO from around the region, which have
issued written endorsements of the proposal
expressing their satisfaction with the results
of this process. Beyond our region, the
Eurosocial+ program also issued a
communiqué in praise of the proposed Model Law
2.0.
The CAJP also heard the
country reports on the progress made for the
implementation of the Inter-American Program for
Access to Public Information, which focused
mainly on the efforts made in active
transparency, based on progress indicators that
the DIL prepared. Said reports will be uploaded
to the DIL web page as they become available.
» To read the report of the Department on International Law,
click here
» To read the endorsement of the Alianza Regional por la Libre Expresión e Información,
click here
»
To read the communiqué issued by Eurosocial,
click here
For further information on this matter, please contact the Department of International Law of the OAS – Technical Secretariat of the Inter-American Juridical Committee +1 202 370 0743.
