BY Ndung’u Wainaina
Press Freedom day is beyond media freedom. It gives people chance to reflect on effectiveness of state in creating the enabling environment for accessibility to information and protecting medium and its agents. We are high speed to information prosperity. People even very ordinary ones, are using information technology to access, communicate and store information. Information is at the centre of development. It is a resource of enormous impact and potential to every citizen. Information belongs to the people not to the state.

Governments do not create information for their own benefit but for the benefit of the public they serve, as part of the legitimate and routine discharge of the government's duties. Information is generated with public money. Therefore, it cannot be unreasonably kept away from citizens. Lack of information denies people the opportunity to develop their potential to the fullest and realise the full range of their human rights. Individual personality, political and social identity and economic capability are all shaped by the information that is available.

The practice of routinely holding information away from the public creates 'subjects' rather than 'citizens' and is a violation of their rights. This was recognised by the UN at its very inception in 1946.. Enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right's status as a legally binding treaty was affirmed in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which states. This has placed the right to access information firmly within the body of universal human rights law. The right to access information underpins all other human rights. For example, freedom of expression and thought inherently rely on the availability of adequate information to inform opinions. The realisation of the right to personal safety requires that people have sufficient information to protect themselves.

The right to information is at the core of the human rights system because it enables citizens to more meaningfully exercise their rights, assess when their rights are at risk and determine who is responsible for any violations. It is important that access to information is recognised as a right because it: accords sufficient importance, as being inherent to democratic functioning and a pre-condition to good governance and the realisation of all other human rights; is part of the accepted international obligations of the state and attracts the guarantee of protection by the state; is more than mere an administrative measure by which information is gifted by governments to their people at their discretion since a legally enforceable right cannot be narrowed or ignored at the whim of government.

Right to access information creates a duty-holder on the one hand and a beneficiary of a legal entitlement on the other. Non-disclosure of information is therefore a violation and the beneficiary can seek legal remedy. It signals that information belongs to the public and not government. The idea that everything is secret unless there is a strong reason for releasing it is replaced by the idea that all information is available unless there are strong reasons for denying it. The onus is on the duty-holder to prove its case for refusing to disclose documents.

It sets a higher standard of accountability. Access to information gives citizens the legal power to attack the legal and institutional impediments to openness and accountability that still dominate the operations of government. It moves the locus of control from the state to the citizen, reinstating the citizen as sovereign. The media acts as a watchdog. It scrutinises the powerful and exposing mismanagement and corruption. It is the foremost means of distributing information. Unfortunately, this power to reach the masses has often been perceived as a threat by closed governments, which have carefully regulated private ownership of the press and attempted to curb the media's ability to gather news, investigate and inform.

Where the media is unable to get reliable information held by government and other powerful interests, it cannot fulfil its role to the best of its abilities. Journalists are left to depend on leaks and luck or to rely on press releases and voluntary disclosures provided by the very people they are seeking to investigate. Lack of access to information leave reporters open to government allegations that their stories are inaccurate and reliant on rumour and half-truths instead of facts. A sound access to information regime provides a framework within which the media can seek, receive and impart essential information accurately and is as much in the interests of government as it is of the people. The right to information holds within it the right to seek information, as well as the duty to give information, to store, organise, and make it easily available, and to withhold it only when it is proven that this is in the best public interest.

The duty to enable access to information rests with government and encompasses two key aspects: enabling citizens to access information upon request; and proactively disseminating important information.

Writer is the Executive Director, International Center for Policy and Conflict; Email: nwainaina@icpcafrica.org