By Toby McIntosh
Although many intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have adopted access to information policies, many have not, and the policies that do exist are proving to be restrictive and in need of fixing.
A new reform drive is necessary to improve transparency at IGOs.
To help encourage this, the UNESCO Right to Know Day Declaration for 2021, now in preparation, should include a clause encouraging countries to support transparency at international organizations in which they participate. In line with the language of the Declaration (Draft 21 09 2021) such an admonition would “Call on each UNESCO Member State”:
To advocate and support efforts to bring greater access to information to international and regional intergovernmental organizations.
This article expands on remarks by the author during Panel 1, “Trends of ATI Laws,” one of the webinars on Sept. 28, 2021, as part of UNESCO’s program to recognize International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI).
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IGOS Not Exempt from Article 19
The theoretical rationale for IGOs to be transparent is clear and widely accepted.
IGOs create policies and perform functions that have worldwide impact. While their membership structures are intergovernmental and their leaders are not directly answerable to voters, their accountability can only assured if the public can obtain information about their decisions and operations.
Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes the right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas” a fundamental human right. This right applies to intergovernmental organizations, just as it does at the national level.
David Kaye, a former UN Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights, wrote in an August 2017 report. “There is no principled reason why intergovernmental organizations should adopt access-to-information policies that vary from those adopted by States.”
A Transparency Charter for International Financial Institutions spells out guiding principles in greater details. It was created by the Global Transparency Initiative (2005-2013), a consortium of nongovernmental organizations that effectively pushed international financial institutions toward greater transparency.
The Charter lays out basic standards for proactive and reactive disclosure of information and was used to create comments on proposed policies at IFIs, including a model policy for the World Bank.
Limited Adoption of FOI Policies
Many IGOs have adopted access to information policies, particularly the international financial institutions. Also, many IGOs have made pronounced improvements in the realm of proactive disclosure.
But there are many IGOs without access policies and with widely varied levels of transparency.
No comprehensive census exists about transparency at IGOs, but EYE looked at openness at 27 UN organizations.
Of these 27, only 15 of the 27 have access to information policies. (See EYE 2020 article.) (Also 2018 survey.)
Most of the policies were adopted over the past two decades. The most recent body to adopt one was the International Maritime Organization earlier this year. (See EYE article.)
The UN Secretariat has yet to play a leading role on freedom of information, and itself has no access policy. (See a 2018 EYE article in which a top official’s hoped to develop a policy and a 2019 article on a UN statement that no policy was being planned.) The UN Special Rapporteur mentioned earlier, wrote in his report that it was “intolerable” for the Secretariat not to have a policy. (See EYE article.)
In a not particularly helpful 2020 report, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) overstated the number of UN entities with access policies, excused the gaps as caused by “capacity constraints” and made few recommendations for improvement. (See EYE report.)
In general, opposition to greater transparency at IGOs comes from member governments, not IGO officials.
Closed Meetings Common
EYE’s survey looked at other elements of transparency, such as whether meetings of the key decision-making bodies at the 27 UN agencies are open or closed.
About half of the agencies (13) hold closed meetings.
More positively, most of the UN agencies (23) perform better when it comes to “proactive disclosure” – revealing agendas and documents in advance of meetings and issuing minutes and documents after meetings.
Some negotiations, including those around climate change, are largely done in public.
The recent necessity of holding virtual meetings may prove to be a beneficial experience if more agencies allow the public to observe meetings.
Where restrictions on documents exist, public oversight is significantly diminished.
For example, at the World Trade Organization, members’ proposals during committee-level meetings are mainly non-public, including crucial “draft texts” that summarize the state of the deliberations. Some draft texts are issued, however, apparently without negative consequences. Restricted WTO documents, available only to all WTO members, sometimes get leaked to outsiders with connections. (See EYE article.)
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 2021 started publishing minutes for Council meetings. But the descriptions are virtually incomprehensible because the underlying documents cited are nonpublic. (See EYE article.) It’s like being told a story with crucial information put in a foreign language.
Weaknesses Concerning Development Finance Institutions
Development finance agencies adopted access policies several decades ago and experience is revealing problems.
One area of considerable weakness is being exposed by Publish What You Fund, a British nongovernmental organization. PWYF is showing that development finance institutions (DFIs) provide very little information about investments they make through private sector financial institutions. (See EYE article.) Investments via financial intermediaries have increased dramatically in recent years, so the gap has consequences.
PWYF has examined disclosures by 17 bilateral and multilateral DFIs. The institutions performed poorly on sharing information about planned projects with affected communities, especially about environmental and social risks. (See EYE article.) And they were not transparent about the results of their lending. (See EYE article.)
PWYF is engaging with the institutions, even masking their names in the research results (so far), in hopes of encouraging change, a nonconfrontational approach.
NGOs have been writing about this transparency hole for years. A detailed 2021 analysis of the African Development Bank policies by the International Accountability Project found that “[d]espite consistently disclosing project information summaries for all projects, the overall accessibility of information disclosed by AfDB is poor and should be strengthened.” Also read a recent analysis of the World Bank’s private sector lending arm by the Bank Information Center, stating in part, “The information that the IFC proactively discloses is not sufficient for civil society and project-affected communities to meaningfully engage with a project.”
Access Policies Showing Age
Experience with the access policies over time is revealing that they are too restrictive.
Here are some examples concerning the World Bank.
- The Bank does not redact documents to provide for partial disclosure.
- The Bank is increasingly invoking a catch-all “exceptional circumstances” exemption. It was used to deny access to a copy of a contract awarded by Sierra Leone to monitor its Covid-19 spending. (See EYE article.)
- The Bank’s pinched definition of the deliberative process exemption was recently criticized by the Bank’s independent appeals panel. (See EYE article.)
At the Green Climate Fund, when civil society organizations asked for basic information about what projects are “in the pipeline,” the Executive Director turned them down. In doing so he rejected recommendations supporting disclosure from an internal review panel. (See EYE article.)
The European Investment Bank is in the process of revising its transparency policy. NGOs, the Aarhus Convention secretariat and the EU ombudsman, are concerned that the proposed changes will even worsen the policy. “The transparency of EIB operations at project level – especially its active dissemination of information – and among its governing bodies remains limited,” according to a statement by 53 NGOs. Also see article on EIB, and other agencies, by Anna Roggenbuck of the CEE Bankwatch Network and Kate Geary of Recourse.
Other common weaknesses at investment institutions include:
- Overusing commercial interest exemptions.
- Allowing governments and other third parties to “veto” the release of their documents. Virtually all governments receiving World Bank loans prevent public disclosure about proposed loans in advance of deliberations by the Bank Board. (See EYE article.)
- Limiting the release of monitoring and audit reports.
Covid-19 Transparency Test
International organizations pledged to build transparency into their Covid-19 response efforts. The verdict is still out on this.
Contracts to buy Covid-19 vaccines are being kept secret, completely or substantially, by the global purchasing entity started by the World Health Organization and by national governments. (See EYE report.) UNICEF, a key partner in the international effort to procure Covid-19 vaccines said it would publish relevant details on the contracts, but only “subject to the consent of suppliers.” (See EYE article.)
The International Monetary Fund’s efforts to improve national transparency concerning Covid-19 spending have met with mixed success, according to two evaluations by civil society groups. (See EYE article.)
The continuing negative impact of nondisclosure agreements between governments and vaccine suppliers is addressed in an article in The Manila Times by House member Edcel C. Lagman.
Conclusions
There should be renewed push for transparency at IGOs, including a mention in the RTK Day Declaration.
NGOs should test access policies by making more requests and monitoring performance. Philanthropic organizations should back projects in this ares, such that of PWYF. Academics should pay more attention to international transparency topics.
Leaders on access to information within the UN system should include this close-to-home subject as part of their mandate
Countries that support transparency, and transparency supporters within IGOs, should more actively push for adoption of good access to information policies at international organizations.
