Many governments, in some cases with the acquiescence of information commissions, seemed to take advantage of COVID-19 to limit access to information. According to Toby Mendel, Executive Director at the Centre for Law and Democracy, “The need for accountability through openness, as well as the imperative need to get relevant information to the public, is greater now than ever.”
With that in mind, the CLD compiled a repository of changes made to right to information (RTI) laws in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more at https://www.law-democracy.org/live/covid-19-update-tracking-changes-to-right-to-information-laws/
Whether the changes will be temporary or left on the books is impossible to know for sure; but the shift toward reducing access to information in jurisdictions around the world makes it easy to expect that they will remain.
