4 March 2024.
The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) has submitted a Note on the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) Revised Proposal for its Access to Information Policy. The Revised Proposal will, when adopted, replace the current 2010 Access to Information Policy. An initial draft proposal was released by the IDB in 2022 and CLD published an Analysis of that draft in December 2022. The current Note, which focuses on changes made since then, should be read alongside CLD’s earlier Analysis.
“Although the Revised Proposal represents a significant improvement over the current Policy and even the earlier draft, the most significant problems identified by CLD in 2022 have still not been addressed,” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of CLD. “We call on the IDB to show real leadership on access to information by addressing these remaining issues.”
The Note comments on several changes in the Revised Proposal as compared to the 2022 draft, including the following:
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- The rules on making and processing requests have been improved in several small but significant ways.
- Changes to three of the exceptions are more mixed and, overall, the regime of exceptions, although notably improved from the 2010 Policy, still contains a restrictive public interest override and a veto for third parties over information provided by them.
- The list of information in the Annex which will be routinely disclosed has been expanded to cover basic operational information, but a clear framework for proactive disclosure is still lacking.
The Note is available here and CLD’s Analysis of the initial draft is available here.
For further information, please contact:
Laura Notess
Senior Legal Officer
Centre for Law and Democracy
Email: laura@law-democracy.org
+1 782 234 4471
www.law-democracy.org
Twitter: @law_democracy
