INTENSE PARTICIPATON IN DISCUSSION FORUMS

Fundar’s activity in forums and working groups was heavily oriented towards central topics that are key to the organization, such as transparency and human rights.

On the first anniversary of the Transparency Institute of the Federal District (INFO-DF), a seminar for promoting transparency culture and information access was held on March 29th; it also sought to review proposals for the related law that rules in the Federal District. In the presentation “Between changes and reforms, the need to modify the law from a guarantor’s point of view”, Fundar pointed out the problem generated by the lack of public records that allow making the right to information access effective.

The Open Society Institute, InfoAccess Europe and Sustentia invited Fundar to expose in Madrid the presentation “What do we do with the information we get?” At the reunion, held from July 17th to the 20th, participants analyzed the role of public information laws in the fight against corruption. On human rights, a series of presentations were made regarding access to justice in Oaxaca and the new criminal Code of that state, related with the participation and recognition of indigenous rights. In this subject it is important to mention the talks about the role of the Ombudsman as a tool for citizen participation and the analysis of the performance of the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico.

In Agust 2007, Fundar, the College from the State of Mexico, AC and the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the UNAM organized the seminar “Democracy, development and accountability”. Kristina Pirker, one of Fundar’s researchers, presented the work called “Access to governmental public information and social accounting”.

One of the main coincidences in this seminar was that giving impulse to transparency and accountability are an answer to the crisis of democracy in Latin America. It was also concluded that the mechanisms for social accounting of official conduct still have important flaws, despite their improvements as a consequence of the pressure of institutional organisms and civil society.

 

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