On September 28, an online discussion on the occasion of the International Right to Know Day was held. The event was organized by the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights in cooperation with the project “EU and Council of Europe working together to support freedom of media in Ukraine” and the project “Human Rights for Ukraine” implemented by UNDP in Ukraine and financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.

During the event, participants noted that the right to information is the basis for transparency and accountability of public authorities, as well as a powerful tool to fight corruption and increase public confidence in public authorities.

Over the past year, Ukraine has made some progress in this area, including ratifying the Convention on Access to Official Documents (Tromso Convention). A Coordinating Council for Access to Public Information of the Office of the VRU Commissioner for Human Rights was also established.

Experts note that access to public information has been significantly challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has changed the work of government agencies and identified previously less obvious problems.

In addition, the problems include the lack of clearly defined those responsible for access to public information, non-unified websites of government agencies and poor work with electronic forms of information requests.

More information is available in Ukrainian.