KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, USE YOUR RIGHTS!

On November 21st and 22nd of the year which has just ended, within the event “Know your rights, use your rights” in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the regional office of the British Council in Latin America summoned several actors to participate in working sessions in order to build a regional effort on information access. The event was held in Sao Paolo, Brazil and within it there was the participation of representatives of civil society, governments, academics and journalists, as well as members of the offices of the British Council in each of the countries involved in the project.

 

Fundar, Center for Analysis and Research had the opportunity of participating in such event. It presented the importance that the push for coordinated initiatives involving the greatest quantity of actors as possible has had for the development and consolidation of the right to know. An example are the workshops and follow up on information requests that organization members of the Collective for Transparency carry out within the call for proposals within the project IFAI-Communities.

 

The relevance of these workshops is explained by the plural articulation of its organizers: an international non-governmental organization (Article XIX), a printed media (Etcetera magazine), an international civil society organization renown worldwide (World Association of Community Radio Stations), an intermediary organization (Fundar, Center for Analysis and Research), a State Agency (the Federal Institute of Access to Public Info rmation) and local actors (civil associations with legal licenses to operate radio frequencies).

 

The British Council happily received, among many others, the proposal to integrate to its regional initiative the methodology of this experience, in which several capacities for deepening the social utility of the right to know have been put together.