THE 3rd BALTIC SEA NGO FORUM

Boris Pustyntshev
8.-10.5.2003 in Turku

RESTRICTION ON ACCESS TO VITAL INFORMATION REPRESENTS A SERIOUS THREAT TO THE WHOLE BALTIC SEA REGION

Access to information is part and parcel of freedom of expression and thus one of the preconditions for ensuring a vibrant and well-informed democracy providing civil society with the possibility to participate actively in societal decision-making and to hold authorities accountable for effectiveness of their governance.

National laws may formally provide for unrestricted coverage by mass media of any event and development, but if it does not ensure transparency of governance, then bureaucrats are quick to introduce actual monopoly on governmental information and start treating it as their personal property. As a result, the public has a limited right of access to information and receives selective coverage of many important issues, including the information which has been "processed" by governmental agencies.

In the past two days we have been formulating the most important goals that the CBSS community is to strive for: sustainable lifestyle and development, healthy environment, vibrant civil society, participation in decision-making, protection of rights of minorities, etc. But all these goals will be realistic only on one condition: that we are well-informed about what is going on in the respective spheres in every country of CBSS. Today, any government that conceals the information about, for example, the state of environment within national borders, puts all of us at serious risks. Any government that tries to keep close the facts of systematic violations of its ethnic minorities' rights, gives boost to xenophobic sentiments in all our countries. As Commissioner Helle Degn justly noted in her introduction "Terrorism and Human Rights," some CBSS member states have introduced, under the pretext of fighting international terrorism, excessive legal limitations on human rights "that have challenged and one could say endangered the individual rights of citizens," thus ruining the chances for "participatory democracy within the Baltic Sea Region."

Access to official information

All member states of the CBSS are members of the Council of Europe and are therefore bound to abide by the standards adopted in this Forum. These standards formally oblige the members to refrain from restricting the flow of and access to information as such, but unfortunately they do not prevent governments from withholding official information.

At the national level, some CBSS member states have long ago adopted Freedom of Information Acts which demand of governmental agencies to provide access to records upon request and to publish the results of their activities, on a regular basis, in special state registers which are open for the public, all the more so for journalists, at any time. This is not yet the case in a number of states of the Baltic region, especially in some of the new constitutional democracies, which have to undergo changes from a tradition of secrecy to a tradition of openness. Due to lack of formal rules of access to governmental information in these countries, this access is to a large extent being regulated by the governments themselves. This implies that the public in these states as well as in all Baltic region stay ignorant about the decisions concerning issues vital for all the region. Such practice runs counter to the objectives set forth in the document of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE): the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation on Decision-making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters which was adopted in Aarhus in June 1998. I have already said that the resulting situation may expose the whole Baltic Sea Region to serious risks. Hence it appears that the right to a healthy environment is directly dependant on the right of access to information, these two fundamental rights cannot be considered independently in a given context.

In some countries, the legislation on access to information suffers from inclusion of too broadly formulated secrecy regulations which allows the authorities to make arbitrary or non-objective decisions dangerous for all the region, for example to classify information about incidents harmful to environment. This undermines constitutional right of access to vital information and is therefore subject to criticism, as illustrated by the CBSS Commissioner in his report on the right of access to official information provided by the laws of the respective member states of December 1997. Wee regret to note that today we face the same dangers as six years ago.

Access to informal information

But notion of access to information implies more than reasonably unrestricted access to official data from the government. Today information at national and international levels is also disseminated informally by means of new communication technologies which have changed the nature and speed of the flow of information. Some governments seem to be increasingly alert about these developments and, from time to time, try to introduce sophisticated censorship to limit access to some e-mail or Internet information without consulting the public, that is, at its own discretion. In order to engage the Baltic Sea states into a productive and sound cross-country cooperation, to stimulate a common development, it is necessary to ensure unhindered access to information for all regional players at this informal level as well.

Challenges

The workshop discussion at the 2001 NGO Forum in Luebeck revealed the main problems with regard to access to information that address consequent challenges to NGOs working in the Baltic Sea region. The problems are all inter-linked and relevant to all CBSS countries, though to different degrees:

• Some of the states don't comply with international standards on access to information, on transparency of governmental activities. The reasons for this state of affairs are lack of enforcement mechanisms with regard to the right of access to information, lack of mechanisms to ensure transparency and governmental accountability, and existence of excessive secrecy laws and illegal practices regarding classification of information on issues of public interest.
• There is a serious concern for the level of awareness as regards the right of access to information. It is of particular importance for post-totalitarian societies where there has been no tradition of openness. There is a need for respective educational programmes aimed at different target groups, in order to generate a more active citizenry and a better prepared administration.
• Independent media is sometimes facing serious obstacles when executing its role as a public watchdog and a guarantor for the right of access to information. In some countries of the Baltic region, journalists and civil activists are being prosecuted by authorities, on false pretexts, for revealing facts of damage to environment done by governmental or industrial agents. Hence, there is a particular need for protection of whistleblowers during periods when access to official information is scarce.

Goals

We can formulate some of the goals related to the identified challenges. At the overall level the goal is to ensure the right of access to information by resorting to norms of national or international legislation, as well as by assisting the formation of transparent and responsible regional governments that would respect their obligations in the human rights field and recognize the role of NGOs as whistleblowers.
Another goal lies in fostering open societies through awareness-raising process as regards the public and the officials, so that both groups realize the advantages of unhindered access to information vital for the society.

Activities

The need for access to information cuts across all sectors of society and, therefore, there is a need for exploring the possibility of setting up broad and interactive information networks within the entire Baltic Sea region. Within this framework, we suggest to establish a regional monitoring system which would seek to provide relevant information to all interested regional NGOs. Issues of concern for such monitoring would be as follows:

• potential environmental hazards originating from national business or state agencies' activities as well as actual ecological disturbances;
• the development of national laws on access to official information as well as their application in practice;
• comparative analyses of attempted restrictions on the use of Internet.

Citizens' groups are ready to assists governments in becoming more open by providing training on issues related to right of access to information and to principles governing this right. Similarly, they may provide training and information campaigns for the society at large to enhance public knowledge on issues of vital importance.

Finally, we suggest that our Forum initiates a draft regional convention on ensuring public access to environmental information in any of our countries, for the adoption by the governments.

Recommendations to CBSS governments

At several occasions, the CBSS governments have discussed different aspects pertaining to access to information in and between the member states. It has repeatedly been announced that regional national governments and NGOs share the conviction that public participation in decision-making, transparency of governance and free access to information provide a strong basement of stable democracies. But to ensure the sustainable follow-up developments of these principles, they are to be made binding for all the parties concerned. Therefore, we suggest that our Forum forwards an appeal to all CBSS member states:

• to comply with the principles they have set forth themselves in the previous CBSS documents by bringing their legislation regulating access to non-classified information and practice of its implementation in conformity with international standards and principles, thus promoting openness in state affairs;
• to abolish all excessive secrecy laws;
• to refrain from attempts at restricting public access to Internet;
• to engage in constructive dialogue with civil society thereby establishing a regional platform for access to and exchange of vital information;
• to issue a joint statement recognizing the linkage between access to information and the state of the environment and to issue a statement recognizing that governments which limit access to environmental information endanger the regional environment;
• to refrain from persecuting journalists and civil activists who expose activities detrimental to environment in the Baltic Sea region and produce indisputable evidence to prove their point;
• to facilitate that the Aarhus Convention on access to environmental information is signed and ratified by all CBSS member states.