African Civil society activists resolve to advocate freedom of information

Over 50 representatives of some media and civil society organisations in Central and Francophone West African countries, meeting in Yaounde, recently resolved to create movements in their respective countries to advocate freedom of information

Freedom of information (FOI) is now a fundamental human right. Everyone has the right to receive information and express opinion within the law; the right to access and update information be it held by public officials. It is, in fact, obligatory for government officials to share information with those they govern in order not to derail in the governance and democratic processes. For as Pansy Tlakula, the special rapporteur for the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights puts it, “Secrecy… leads to corruption.”
However, FOI is still a mirage in most African countries. Governments have monopoly of information, and so people, particularly media men, are arrested and detained for obtaining and dishing out one information or the other.
The foregoing constituted part of the discussion at a two-day regional workshop on FOI (Central and Francophone West Africa) that held in Yaounde on 3 and 4 October.
The meeting, the first of its kind in this part of the world, which brought together over 50 representatives of the civil society, the media and faith-based organisations, public officials and parliamentarians from Cameroon and Francophone West African countries, was a feedback workshop on a study and report undertaken and put together by Citizens Governance Initiative, CGI, in 2007.
Thus the state of access to information in Cameroon and in the other countries represented and even in some African countries that were not represented was examined, with the Cameroonian study taken as a template.
It was revealed that aspects of FOI are captured in Cameroon’s legislation but are largely not implemented, which is why access to information is limited here.
In Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Conakry and DR Congo, access to information is equally very limited or non-existent, whereas in Senegal and Mali progress is being made by their respective governments in this direction.
For their part, South Africa, Uganda and to an extent Zimbabwe have enacted laws in favour of the right to access information while Nigeria, Malawi, Tanzania, etc have bills pending in parliament, some for about three years now.
Participants at the workshop agreed that movements advocating the right to FOI should be created in different countries, for “freedom of information is the touchstone of all freedoms the African Union seeks to defend.” They called on countries which are already advanced in this fight to provide funds to help those which are not
But inasmuch as information flow should not be restricted, media men were reminded that there are laws and professional ethics to be respected in the circulation of information.
Source: The Herald