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23 March 2016
Representatives from five South Asia countries held a regional conference on right to information on March 16-17, stressing the need to encourage greater use of RTI laws, according to an article in The Daily Times and another in The Tribune. Delegates from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal met at a conference sponsored by […]
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3 February 2016
A court in Pakistan has ruled that the president may not overrule the federal ombudsman in right to information cases, Umar Cheema reports in The News and Sohail Sarfraz writes in the Business Recorder. The Lahore High Court set aside a presidential decision in favor of the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR). “The verdict had […]
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17 January 2016
The government of Pakistan has constituted a special five-person committee to evaluate the long-pending right to information bill, according to an article in Daily Pakistan. The News reported that the group wlll “finalize draft law in a meeting on January 21 and it will then be laid before the house as a government bill.” The […]
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7 January 2016
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ranked as the Pakistani province with the best overall right to information act and response performance, with a score of 73% in a study conducted by PILDAT, the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. Punjab was second with a score of 65% and Balochistan third with a score of 29%. The 2002 […]
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1 December 2015
By Zahid Abdullah The author is associated with Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives and coordinator of Coalition on Right to Information. Follow him on Twitter at @XahidAbdullah This article was published Nov. 28 in The Tribune and is reprinted with permission. Other than the insertion of Article 19-A in the Constitution through the 18th Amendment, major political […]
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27 August 2015
Pakistan’s government has not lived up to official promises that a right to information reform bill would be considered at the next Cabinet meeting, reports Umar Cheema in The News. The Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Pervaiz Rashid told The News Aug. 22 that the draft bill would be presented in the “next’” cabinet […]
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23 July 2015
Pakistan’s draft Right to Information Act has scored an “astonishing 146 points” on the RTI Rating. The score puts the bill 11 points ahead of the best-ranked RTI law in the world, Serbia’s, which got 135 points. The assessment of the Pakistan bill was issued by the Centre for Law and Democracy. The CLD assessment […]
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8 July 2015
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has asked that the draft of Right to Information Bill be placed on the agenda of the next meeting of the Federal Cabinet for its approval, according to an article on JournalismPakistan.com and another in PakistanToday. Sharif on July 3 asked the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to introduce RTI bill […]
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25 June 2015
The legislature in the Pakistan’s province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly has exempted itself from the purview of K-P RTI Act of 2013, according to media reports. The K-P Assembly also reduced the size of the Information Commission to two from three. Another amendment provides a right to appeal commission decisions to district court. As described by journalist […]
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7 May 2015
The Pakistan People’s Party has called for adoption of the Right to Information (RTI) Bill, an appeal welcomed by a key advocacy group, though it noted that the PPP didn’t push through an RTI bill when it was in power. In recent times, an RTI bill was adopted by a Senate standing committee but it […]
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11 March 2015
By Umar Cheema The author is an investigative reporter for the Pakistani newspaper The News, where this article first appeared March 10. ISLAMABAD: The PML-N government is determined to promote transparency in rhetoric but has been found building walls of secrecy in reality. The Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights has denied the citizens’ […]
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17 February 2015
A Pakistan Senate Committee Feb. 16 has expressed its displeasure with the lack of progress on Right to Information bill. “Delay in presenting such an important bill before the Cabinet for approval, is a grave constitutional violation which proves that it is not on priority list of the government despite the fact that the bill […]
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12 November 2014
Awareness of right to know laws in three Southeast Asian countries is very low and public officials report many obstacles to implementing the RTI laws, according to a new report by the Asia Foundation. The study was done in partnership with civil society organizations in Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan, and with the foundation’s country office […]
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1 October 2014
The bureaucracies in the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) are offering “stiff resistance” to the new right to information laws, according to the Centre for Peace and Development Initiative (CPDI). Information was withheld in over 87 per cent of the requests, the group said. CPDI sent in 924 information requests to the governments […]
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14 August 2014
A compromise right to information bill for Pakistan has emerged from discussions among the political parties and is being praised by RTI campaigners. The draft “Right to Information Act, 2014,” was described Aug. 8 by Waseem Abbasi in an article in The News. Abbasi quoted sources as saying the bill has the support of the […]
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18 July 2014
A committee of the Pakistan Senate on July 15 approved amendments to a right to information bill, according to an article in The Daily Times and one by the Pakistan Press Foundation. The Standing Committee on Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage, chaired by Senator Kamil Ali Agha, dropped a provision that would have left authority […]
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19 May 2014
The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting has recommended creation of an independent federal information commission and legal protection for whistleblowers. A committee recently finalized its recommendations on the draft Right to Information bill which has been proposed by the ministry, according to Dawn and the Daily Times. The committee also proposed amendments […]
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7 March 2014
Two Pakistani states have taken somewhat delayed steps to implement recently passed right to information laws. The Punjab government has established the Punjab Information Commission and appointed the commissioners. One of them is Mukhtar Ahmed Ali. He is the founding director of a group that advocated for the new law, the Centre for Peace and […]
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24 January 2014
By Zahid Abdullah Zahid Abdullah works for Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) and is also Coordinator of Coalition on Right to Information, (CRTI). 2013 will always be regarded as a watershed year for right to information movement in Pakistan. Although Pakistan was the first country in the South Asia to have introduced a […]
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13 December 2013
Two Pakistani provinces have approved right to information laws – Punjab and Kyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The most recent action came Dec. 13 when Punjab legislators passed the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information (RTI) Bill 2013. Opposition members who said the bill is “unclear” and “negates the freedom of speech” as enshrined in the constitution, according to an […]
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4 October 2013
The state of Punjab in Pakistan has decreed a right to information law. The “Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Ordinance 2013” (text) has been introduced as an ordinance, making it valid for 120 days. After that it lapses unless approved by the provincial assembly. “Great development here and we are very excited!!,” commented Zahid […]
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30 August 2013
A Senate committee in Pakistan has approved a freedom of information bill. The Senate Committee on Information and Broadcasting approved the bill on Aug. 28 after eight months of deliberations. Committee chairman Kamil Ali Agha is expected to propose it in the Senate as a multi-party bill. The committee rejected a request from the defense […]
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27 August 2013
The Pakistani province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Aug. 13 promulgated a Right to Information Ordinance. The ordinance (official site) (Word version) is better an earlier version, according to advocates, but they said it still needs improvements. The ordinance, which has a 90-daye life-span, must be presented before the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly for review. Critics believe that […]
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13 August 2013
The Government of Punjab, a state in Pakistan, has requested public comment on “The Punjab Freedom of Information Act 2013.” The draft was issued Aug. 7 and is available here and here. It has been approved in principle by the Cabinet. Public comments were requested within 15 days to dgprmh@gmail.com. In the state of Khyber […]
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29 July 2013
Civil society groups are objecting that the proposed right to information ordinance in Pakistan’s province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was watered down. The Coalition on Right of Information (CRTI) and allies held a press conference July 24 recently to oppose the bill which was changed in early July by the Cabinet. CRTI coordinator Zahid Abddullah said […]
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19 July 2013
(The following article was prepared by the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) and summarizes a longer report.) Rhetoric aside, the PML-N (the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz) and PTI (the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) are awkwardly alike in denying the public the right to information as their provincial governments in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) have […]
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10 July 2013
The Cabinet of the Pakistan province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on July 9 approved a right to information bill, according to a report in The Nation. In the meantime, a committee in Punjab province is considering an RTI bill that observers had thought was nearly final. At the national level, a Senate subcommittee held a session […]
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21 June 2013
A developing Pakistani freedom of information law is getting poor initial reviews. A Senate subcommittee recently produced a long-awaiting national bill (text). (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.) Zahid Abdullah, Coordinator Coalition on Right to Information (CRTI), sharply criticized the bill in a statement. “There is a long negative list … and a small positive list of […]
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14 June 2013
A subcommittee of Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Information and Broadcasting June 13 approved a draft Right to Information (RTI) Act 2013, The three-person committee rejected a last-minute request to delay from the Ministry of Defense, with one senator saying the ministry had been “contemptuous.” The Information Ministry has agreed to update the proposal in light […]
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5 April 2013
The Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting in Pakistan on April 5 gave the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting 15 days to table a draft of Freedom of Information law before the committee. The directive was issued during the committee meeting chaired by Kamil Ali Agha at the Parliament House, according to an Associated […]
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20 March 2013
The Punjab cabinet on March 11 approved the Freedom of Information Act 2012. The bill expected to go to parliament for further action, after a coming election, is an improvement over a previous version. It would rate a 105 on the scale for evaluating legal frameworks by Access Info Europe and the Centre for Law and Democracy (Global Right to […]
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31 December 2012
The government of Punjab has prepared freedom of information legislation, according to media reports, but one early reaction suggests that much information would be exempted from disclosure. The “bureaucracy” of the Pakistani province has finalized the draft, according to a Dec. 21 article in The Dawn. “The draft was finalised during a meeting of the administrative secretaries […]
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10 December 2012
Pakistan’s coalition government will soon present a right to information bill to parliament, according to the RTI advocacy group Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI). In July, Pakistan’s Senate formed a subcommittee to work with the information ministry to develop freedom of information legislation. (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.) CPDI Program Manager Zahid Abdullah reported […]
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20 July 2012
Pakistan’s Senate has formed a subcommittee to work with the information ministry to develop freedom of information legislation. The Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting on July 18 approved establishment of the committee, which will be convened by Senator Farhatullah Babar, with senators Syed Zafar Ali Shah and Daud Khan Achakzai as members. The […]
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6 July 2012
Only two out of 54 Pakistani federal and provincial departments initially provided information information requested by the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) in a recent study. Twenty-five departments responded positively but after the applicant got help from the federal or provincial ombudsman. CPDI concluded that the federal and provincial governments should repeal the […]
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25 April 2012
By Muhammad Aftab Alam Alam is the executive director of the newly established Institute for Research, Advocacy and Development (IRADA), a new not-for-profit Pakistani independent policy, advocacy, research and training organization. This article first appeared in The News and is reprinted with permission of the author. “The Indian Right to Information Act, 2005 and its […]
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27 January 2012
By Ikramul Hag and Huzaima Bukhari The writers are lawyers and visiting professors at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. This article first appeared Jan 17 in The News, and is reprinted by permission of the authors. “Every citizen shall have the right to have access to information in all matters of public importance subject […]
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14 October 2011
Member of Parliament Sherry Rehman Oct. 11 introduced a right to information bill in the Pakistan National Assembly. Her bill, however, does not yet have the support of the government. The government “did not oppose the private member’s bill,” noted one newspaper report. “It is ironic that it has been tabled as a private member’s […]
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17 June 2011
The Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) has called for the appointment of the Federal Ombudsman in Pakistan, pointing out that the position has been vacant since the end of October 2010. The Office of the Federal Ombudsman was established as the result of President’s order 1 of 1983, CPDI noted, with the purpose […]
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24 March 2011
The Pakistan government should fulfill its promise to enact a new right to information law, activists said during a demonstration in Islamabad. A March 17 walk to the parliament building was organized by the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives. They asked why top officials have not fulfilled pledges to replace the Freedom of Information […]
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25 February 2011
By Zahid Abdullah The writer is based in Islamabad, Pakistan, and works for the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives They had gathered to protest about the denial of their right to information. The venue was the road in front of Rawalpindi Press Club and the date Feb. 22, 2011. There were only sixty of […]
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24 January 2011
A top Pakistani official said Jan. 22 that that a draft right to information bill would be finalized by mid-February, according to a press account. Speaking at a meeting of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Qamar Zaman Kaira, said consultations with stakeholders are nearly concluded. […]
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5 November 2010
Several examples of the difficulties of accessing information in Pakistan were discussed in a recent article by Zahid Abdullah, who works for Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives. The Pakistan law, he said, is “a very weak law in the shape of Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002 and whatever effectiveness it had was watered down […]
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26 May 2009
The “minutes” of the World Bank’s executive board meetings, released publicly, are brief notations of the official action, usually one paragraph. They reveal almost nothing about what transpired during the closed deliberations. The “summaries,” by contrast, describe the key points of discussion. They condense, without names, the comments made by the executive directors. The […]
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21 April 2009
In 2006, a case was brought to the Inspections Panel over the controversial West African Gas Pipeline Project. The list of disclosure-related allegations was extensive. According to the complainants, although West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) periodically consulted landowners, other stakeholders were wrongly excluded and the overwhelming majority of our people were not consulted during […]
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17 March 2009
Finding the World Bank’s front door in order to ask for nonpublic information isn’t easy. Here’s the right answer: pic@worldbank.org Value that answer; getting it took a while. Here’s my saga. Actually, I started in the right place and then got more and more confused. When I first wrote pic@worldbank.org I asked simply if they […]
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17 March 2009
The World Bank has rejected a request by a civil society group for a key document about a major water project in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The denial is not unexpected — it follows the letter of the Bank’s disclosure policy — but is very frustrating to Mushtaq Gaadi, who works with an […]
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17 July 2008
The Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan (CRCP) this week held a consultation on the draft Freedom of Information Bill of 2008, which is likely to soon be tabled for consideration by the legislature. The CRCP, which has been working for to strengthen the freedom of information (FOI) framework in Pakistan since 1998, expressed reservations about […]
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9 August 2005
A newspaper in Pakistan has written about a nonpublic World Bank report evaluating ten years of World Bank activities in Pakistan and shedding light on the process of preparing such major evaluations. The evaluation report is generally unfavorable to the World Bank, according to the Business Recorder, which wrote about the conclusions in a July […]
