2030 Agenda will fail without full respect for the right to information: UN expert

GENEVA (27 September 2023) – Without universal and meaningful connectivity for all, the right to information is an empty promise for billions of people around the world, said Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. Ahead of the International Day for Universal Access to Information, the expert issued the following statement:

“The Internet is not equally available or accessible to all and that is deepening existing inequalities and creating new inequities along lines of gender, geography, ethnicity, income and digital literacy, increasing the vulnerabilities of those most marginalised in society.

Noting that this year’s International Day for Universal Access to Information focuses on online spaces, I call on States to strengthen their efforts to close the digital divide and remove all barriers to the right to information.
The right to information is ‘the oxygen’ without which neither democracy nor development can flourish.

By enabling people to be better informed and better equipped to participate in decision-making, access to information, online and offline, improves the quality and sustainability of development outcomes. By empowering citizens, civil society and the media to hold governments and companies to account, it makes democracy more meaningful.

As my report shows, the good news is that many States have adopted laws on access to information and some even recognise access to the Internet as a legal right, but the bad news is that these laws often are not implemented effectively, and various tactics are used to restrict or deny access to information, online and offline, to investigative journalists, human rights defenders and other civil society actors.

In more than 74 countries over the past five years, Governments have shut down or slowed down the Internet, or blocked mobile communications for intermittent or prolonged periods, affecting access to information and disrupting health, education and other essential services.

Information, freedom of expression and active participation, online and offline, of youth, civil society and independent media are vital, whether to tackle global challenges, such as climate change and pandemics or to break age-old patterns of discrimination, exclusion and violence.

Universal and affordable access to the Internet and access to information are both clear targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. I urge all States to translate the commitments they made recently at the High-Level Summit on Sustainable Development into concrete action.”

ENDS

*Ms. Irene Khan was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression on 17 July 2020. Ms. Khan is the first woman to hold this position since the establishment of the mandate in 1993. She teaches at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and was previously Secretary General of Amnesty International from 2001 to 2009 and Director General of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) from 2012 to 2019.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent of any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.