Carter Center Works to Open Laws Abroad

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

By DANIEL YEE, Associated Press Writer

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ATLANTA —

The Carter Center is well known for overseeing elections and protecting health and human rights worldwide, but it also has another program less familiar to the public: helping establish laws similar to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act in foreign countries.

Beginning Wednesday, the Atlanta-based organization is hosting what's believed to be the first conference on helping foreign countries develop "access to information" laws, drawing participants from nearly 40 nations. The dignitaries include former President Jimmy Carter, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure.

The center hopes to create set of recommendations for the laws during the conference.

"The question is how do we advance, how do we ensure we don't retreat?" said Laura Neuman, the center's Access to Information Project manager. "If we agree this is a human right, then it should spark the imagination everywhere."

The organization began looking into helping other countries with right-to-information laws in 1999 with a pilot project in Jamaica. Back then, only a handful of mainly Western countries had access to information laws, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden.

Today, nearly 70 countries _ including some developing nations _ have "right to information" laws, Neuman said.

The nonprofit found that affording people the right to government information affected all areas of government, from health care to human rights. At times such information access had an impact on other areas the center was involved in, such as health programs.

"We see how transformative the right to information can be to help people get canals and wells for water," she said.

Studies have shown that having accessible public information on budgets or contracts meant that governments tended to more wisely use funds and other resources and costs were lower, Neuman said.

For example, after Uganda made available information about how much money was spent in local schools, the government went from providing a single digit percentage of its education money toward local schools to almost 90 percent, Neuman said.

Access to information was one of the first rights put in South Africa's Bill of Rights in the post-Apartheid era, because a "lack of information allowed Apartheid to thrive," Neuman said.

According to the Constitutional Court of South Africa's Web site, access to information law aims to "foster a culture of transparency and accountability in public and private bodies."

Such laws also develop confidence from investors in Western countries, said Charles N. Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

"The West is leaning on the developing world and saying 'Open up _ we're not going to pour money into something we can't see,'" Davis said.

Toward that end, The Carter Center's reputation of credibility has helped in getting freedom of information experts working with foreign countries, Davis said.

"They are playing a key leadership role in a very important issue," Davis said. "This is part of a major global trend toward more transparent government. We've got nations literally all over the world starting to enact FOI laws that are in many cases better than our own."

Although each country may develop its own law for access to information, basic principles for the laws include all documents should be made available to the public except under very specific circumstances, there should be proper enforcement of the law and a process for appeals, Neuman said.

"This is not going to happen overnight _ it takes generations," she said. "The United States has had a law for over 40 years and still we're trying to strengthen it and perfect it. We're at least giving them that information, those lessons. That's a big role for us."

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On the Net:

The Carter Center: http://www.cartercenter.org