How Accessing Information Enables Women's Equitable Participation in Public Affairs

• Author: Honor Tuohy
• Position: The Author is currently working towards an LLM in International Human Rights Law and Public Policy in University College Cork
• Pages: 73-83

(2019) 18 COLR 73

73

HOW ACCESSING INFORMATION ENABLES WOMEN’S EQUITABLE

PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Honor Tuohy*

With concerted efforts, governments and [civil society organisations] can reverse the

information asymmetry and ensure that women are able to exercise their fundamental

right to information with the same facility as men. When armed with power of

information, women will benefit more fully from the values of openness, accountability

and meaningful participation, and will use the information for economic empowerment

and the fulfilment and protection of rights. A free flow of information to women will

transform lives.

1

A INTRODUCTION

Access to information has reached the level of a quasi-constitutional or constitutional right in

many democratic states, a status which is referred to as the ‘constitutional anchoring’ of

Freedom of Information (FOI).

2

It follows that this anchoring is a basis for ‘judicial review of

administrative actions and parliamentary legislation’.

3

Initially, this article will draw an outline

of the development of regional codification around the right to information in order to highlight

that the right to access information is a fundamental part of the ‘proper functioning of

substantive as well as procedural democracy’.

4

Access to information is thus shown as ‘a

necessary condition for the exercise of other human and civil rights’.

5

The reasoning given for

the central importance of a right to information is that a healthy democracy requires citizens

who are ‘sufficiently well-informed’ to enable useful participation in public affairs.

6

Thus,

transparency, when applied to governmental procedure, is central to citizens’ ‘oversight’

* The Author is currently working towards an LLM in International Human Rights Law and Public Po licy in

University College Cork. She is focused on understanding current global legal systems and methods being used

to reinforce oppressive governmental and organisational structures, especially in terms of women and their status

within society. She has a P hD in Management from the University of St Andrews (Scotland) which studied the

legitimisation of organisations and the processes used by people w ithin them to augment their standing and

legitimacy

1

Laura Neuman, ‘The Right of Access to Information: E xploring Gender Inequities’ in Duncan Edwards and

Rosie McGee (eds), Opening Governance (Institute of Development Studies 2016) 83, 95.

accessed 23 March 2019.

2

Roy Peled and Yoram Rabin, ‘The Constitutional Right to Information’ (2011) 42(2) Columbia Human Rights

Law Review 357, 380.

3

ibid.

4

ibid 369.

5

ibid 369, 370.

6

Maeve McDonagh, ‘The Right to Information in International Human Rights Law’ (2013) 13(1) Human Rights

Law Review 25, 38.