Open governance and survival

Last week, at least two major events occurred with close relevance to Caribbean development that ought to have signalled greater urgency regarding the tasks required to ensure the viability of our tiny states.

In what must be described as a hugely enlightened moment, UNESCO chose “A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the Environmental Crisis” as the global theme for observance of World Press Freedom Day 2024.

The other significant occasion was the launch of a “Review of the Legislative Framework of Freedom of Information and Access to Information Legislation in the English-speaking Caribbean” by the Kingston-headquartered Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) – which I serve as Vice President.

What was important about both events was that these two activities had been recognised (both before and during) as being mutually beneficial and co-dependent.

In summary: without recognition of the right of our populations to access information held in trust on their behalf by public agencies, there can be little progress with making the several issues of survival priority items in an informed public space.

Access to/freedom of information laws, for instance, form part of a society’s toolkit to assist it in getting to the bottom of issues affecting it. This, some of us assert, is a question of legal right and not a privilege extended by benevolent governments.

Caribbean countries that have refused to either pass such legislation or ensure that its existing form is meaningful are in breach of the kind of relationship that acknowledges such a right.

Furthermore, all our countries have signed onto a multiplicity of global commitments with explicit obligations to ensure that citizens have a legal right to access information held by public entities – albeit with a narrow selection of widely-acceptable exceptions.

I can cite several such commitments under the thematic banners of Open Government, Maximum Disclosure, and other undertakings related to satisfaction of the requirements of what is described as “the public interest.”

When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were being negotiated, for instance, media development groups all lobbied vociferously for the assurance that public access to information should form part of this global thrust to pursue a developmental paradigm that was sustainable. Such an aspiration is now found in Target 16.10 of the SDGs.

There is also the hemispheric Escazu Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. (As far as I am aware and from the available literature, T&T, Barbados, The Bahamas, and Suriname are not signatories to/have not ratified this.)

Among the several uses of this resource is an ability to acquaint journalists and other citizens with the information they require to make sense of public affairs. Last week we advised regional journalists that their investigations need not stop at the point where a public official says “no” to you - the norm in too many instances.

The MIC had established a regional “ATI Help Desk” to assist in taking difficult cases several steps further. But even if such a mechanism did not exist, the existence of an ATI/FOI law in Caribbean countries provides a theoretical avenue for access.

Both the UNESCO focus on “the environmental crisis” – and there are those who do not agree that we confront a profoundly serious “crisis” – and the MIC study establish key linkages between media and civil society performance and the capacity of people to intervene meaningfully in their present and future.

UNESCO expressed the challenge by declaring the concept of sustainable development “in jeopardy”, meaning that “the triple planetary crisis—climate change, biodiversity loss, and air pollution - along with their connections to public health issues, the need to strengthen democracy, to tackle dis-/misinformation on digital platforms, among other issues have become major challenges for humanity.”

I am not sure whether all of last week’s Caribbean celebrants understood the gravity of such a declaration by the world body. On the evidence, UNESCO has not engaged in alarmist hyperbole. Neither has the MIC overstated the case for greater openness in the management of officially held information.

In both instances, these ambitions confront a pervasive culture of secrecy; the right to know being a chronic omission in the practice of governance.

Take a close look at the issues occupying the news agendas of the region and tell me in which instance has the absence of open governance not been at the root of numerous current crises.

UNESCO’s admonition and the MIC work programme could not possibly have been more on target.

---