World Bank launches Access to Information Appeals Board

from The World Bank:

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2010 – The World Bank today announced the appointment of Mr. Wajahat Habibullah, Mr. Daniel J. Metcalfe and Mr. Olivier Schrameck to serve as members of the independent Access to Information Appeals Board. Their appointments, which were endorsed by the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, will start on July 1, 2010, for two years.

In approving the World Bank Access to Information Policy, which takes effect on July 1, 2010, the Board of Executive Directors approved the establishment of an appeals process that enables parties to file an appeal if their requests for information have been denied by the World Bank....

· Mr. Habibullah is currently the Chief Information Commissioner, Central Information Commission of India, and is an established expert in the area of access to information.

· Mr. Metcalfe is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law, American University. He has both government and legal expertise in freedom of information issues. Mr. Metcalfe served in the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Information and Privacy from its founding in 1981 until his retirement from government service in 2007. He is currently the Executive Director of “Collaboration on Government Secrecy,” a non-partisan academic project devoted to the study of government openness and secrecy.

Read the rest here.

International FOI round-up

Peru: The National Security Archives released 21 declassified U.S. records to a tribunal in Peru, which recently found the country's former president, Alberto Fujimori, guilty of human rights atrocities. Six of those key records are posted online.

More here.

Brazil: Top-level Lula government officials are finally showing support for a right-to-information law, which was called for in the country's 1988 Constitution. It is expected that the proposed bill will be introduced in Congress by the end of April. Journalists have criticized a draft of the bill for not establishing an independent agency to implement the law.

More here.

Chile: Chile will join the increasing number of Latin American countries with FOI laws on April 20. The law, signed in August, will establish a "four-member watchdog council that will oversee implementation of the law, and rule on appeals," according to freedominfo.org.

More here.

Egypt: Representatives from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Palestine, Mauritania and Yemen attended a January conference that led to the creation of the Cairo Declaration, which "embodies a fundamental consensus on the state of access to information in Arab countries and also makes recommendations on how Arab countries can adopt and pass FOI legislation while encouraging public participation," according to freedominfo.org.

More here.

World Bank: The World Bank has scheduled its first nine of 30 consultation sessions to discuss its proposed new disclosure policy.

More here.