An AEC, good; but where's my right to information? | Bangkok Post: opinion

ASEAN

The Asean Charter includes as one of the purposes of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the promotion of "a people-oriented Asean in which all sectors of society are encouraged to participate in, and benefit from, the process of Asean integration and community building".

As Asean moves ahead with work relating to the implementation of the Asean Charter including through the Road Map for an Asean Economic Community (AEC) and the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), it is high time that Asean made good its rhetoric of people orientation, and started the process of developing and adopting a Freedom of, or Access to, Information Policy for Asean.

By this we mean a set of concrete rules or policies providing for the substantive and procedural details by which the people in the region are able to access information produced or received by Asean and its many organs in the course of its work, subject only to a narrow list of reasonable exceptions.