From Human Right Watch
Tunisia’s first freedom of information law, approaching its third anniversary, significantly advances the rights of citizens to get information from publicly funded institutions, Human Rights Watch said today. The law’s real impact, however, depends on the actual authority of a body created to compel responses from uncooperative institutions.
“With its right-to-information law, Tunisia is once again leading the Arab world in promoting transparency in public institutions,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “But the verdict is still out on whether the enforcement system for making government information public will have teeth.”
Tunisia passed the “Right to Access Information Law” (Law No. 2016-22) in March 2016, joining the few Arab countries that have such laws. Tunisia’s law obliges public bodies to furnish a more extensive range of information than legislation in Jordan (adopted in 2007), Yemen (2012), Lebanon (2017), and Morocco (2017). It also limits what information can be denied. Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government has had a similar law on the books since 2013.
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David Anderson says
Interesting. Tunisia, little Tunisia that few Americans have even heard of, is such an inspiring example to the rest of that extremely troubled area. Libya is a failed state, Algeria a frozen dictatorship which will probably be failed in 5 years, and Egypt is currently a bankrupt disaster. But Tunisia ROCKS.