26 June 2025.
This year, for the first time ever, civil society organisations (CSOs) held a parallel NGO Day event alongside the closed event for officials at the annual International Conference of Information Commissioners (ICIC), held in Berlin this year. Participants in the NGO Day event, held on 25 June 2025, adopted the Berlin CSO Declaration on the Right to Information and Environmental Justice, setting out key commitments for CSOs, alongside calls for action from States, the ICIC and all stakeholders.
“It is really exciting that, after more than 20 years, the ICIC has finally instituted this parallel event, providing a very welcome opportunity for CSOs, working as a community, to focus on issues of concern to us, something we rarely get to do” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of CLD. “The Declaration captures some of the more important issues for CSOs today, with a particular focus on the huge challenges of shrinking civic space for CSOs in many countries.”
The Declaration commits CSOs to work collectively to promote the right to information and access to environmental information, to continue to focus advocacy efforts on addressing ongoing attacks on civil space and to work to increase collaboration and the sharing of best practices. Given that the Declaration was adopted alongside the official ICIC event, it includes two key calls to the ICIC, namely to institutionalise holding a parallel civil society gathering alongside the ICIC and to continue to support the engagement of civil society representatives in the ICIC.
The majority of the calls in the Declaration are for States. These include a call to adopt, as necessary, strong right to information laws, including by providing for “strong, independent and sufficiently resourced administrative oversight bodies”, as well as to ensure proper implementation of those laws. The Declaration also calls on States to respect freedom of association and to “provide funding and other forms of support for advocacy and other work in the areas of the right to information and environmental justice”.
The Declaration is available here.
For further information, please contact:
Toby Mendel
Executive Director
Centre for Law and Democracy
Email: toby@law-democracy.org
+1 902 431-3686
www.law-democracy.org
X: @law_democracy
