Civil Society Organizations and Media and Human Rights Associations Warn of the Government’s Aim to Pass a Law that Restricts the Freedom of Accessing Information

Civil Society Organizations and Media and Human Rights Associations Warn of the Government’s Aim to Pass a Law that Restricts the Freedom of Accessing Information

Civil society organizations (CSOs) and different media and human rights associations followed, with great concern, the Council of Ministers’ move to ratify a bill to regulate the right of accessing information in a confidential manner, without allowing anyone other than ministers to review its provisions.

This draft law, whose copy was obtained by the civil society, violates the basic principles of the right to access information (which had been previously agreed upon socially and officially). The previous consensus included the establishment of a competent commission that is financially and administratively independent to monitor the government’s commitment to citizens’ right to access public information. However, the current draft of the said bill assigned the monitoring and follow-up authorities to a so-called ‘Information Department” falling under the Council of Ministers’ Secretary-General. Hence, this department’s powers came under the umbrella of the Secretary-General, who directly reports to the Council of Ministers, according to the organizational structure and Civil Service Law.

The provisions of the proposed bill contravene the basic principle of disclosing public information. Therefore, this bill violates international standards because it includes a number of "exceptions" to reject requests for accessing information. This is similar to what is seen in some non-democratic Arab regimes, which adopted Right to Obtain Information laws but were criticized by the international and local communities due to the “exceptions”. These exceptions are manipulated by governments to withhold some information that should not be hidden from the public.

The current version of this draft law, which was distributed to ministers prior to ratification, does not reflect a policy of governmental openness. This is seen despite the government’s pledge (on several local and international occasions) to follow the “Open Government” initiative. For example, the Council of Ministers had announced its willingness to implement that approach, which requires [properly] regulating public information and administrative records as a prerequisite for approving that initiative.  Therefore, civil society organizations (CSOs) are warning against approving that law in its current wording because it inherently violates the right to obtain information. Such bills should rather prevent the withholding of information and the spread of false and misleading news that threatens civil peace, along with promoting the freedom of opinion and expression and freedom of the press/media by enabling the latter to access the real sources of information and deal with them professionally. CSOs also call upon the government to hold consultations and community dialogues regarding the formulation of that draft law.  This is vital in spite of their reservations on the mechanism of issuing decree laws, as the latter should only be passed in emergency cases, as stipulated in the Palestinian Basic Law. Instead, there was an exaggeration in issuing such decree laws intermittently. Furthermore, there should be the prevention of wasting substantial efforts spanning more than 18 years in preparing draft laws, in order to guarantee citizens’ right to access information and the freedom of opinion and expression.

Organizations that signed this statement: