The Paraguayan Supreme Court of Justice will have to decide if a San Lorenzo resident, (Daniel Vargas Télles), who requested his municipal authorities for information regarding the number of hired employees, their job descriptions and salaries; will be able to access this information or if providing it will diminish the employees’ privacy.
This is the first case on access to public information that has reached the Court, and it has been led by the Ombudsman with support from IDEA’s lawyers.
Given the transcendence this decision will have for Paraguay and the region, the Regional Alliance for Freedom of Speech and Information--a coalition of Academia and some of the most prestigious organizations in the Americas that promote freedom of speech and the right to access information, and of which IDEA is a member--have decided to actively intervene.
In December, members of the Regional Alliance for the Freedom of Speech and Information will appear before the Court as Amicus Curiae (“Friends of the Court”); that is, as experts who present the highest Paraguayan Court with what is now state-of-the-art on the matter considering this is a case of collective transcendence and general interest.
The Regional Alliance has shown interest in this case because the Paraguayan Court decision will constitute a regional test of applicability of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights’ September 2006 decision on the case “Claude Reyes vs. Chile” and in which they maintained that Article 13 of the San Jose Pact of Costa Rica (American Convention on Human Rights) protects the right of every person to request access to information controlled by the State.
There is no precedent to this in the Paraguayan judicial history, and it will be one of the first examples in the Southern Cone of regional collaboration among civil society organizations promoting human rights at the local level.
The following organizations will appear as “Amicus Curiae”: The Open Society Justice Initiative (USA, global) and the organizations that are members of the Alliance: Acción Ciudadana, (Guatemala), Asociación de Periodistas de El Salvador (El Salvador), Asociación Nacional de la Prensa – ANP (Bolivia), Asociación por los Derechos Civiles – ADC (Argentina), Centro de Archivos y Acceso a la Información – CAInfo (Uruguay), Comité por la Libre Expresión – C-Libre (Honduras), Consejo Nacional de Periodismo – CNP (Panama), Fundación Democracia Sin Fronteras (Honduras), Fundación Institucionalidad y Justicia (Dominican Republic), Due Process of Law Foundation (USA), Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa – FLIP (Colombia), Fundación Prensa y Democracia – PRENDE (Mexico), Fundación Pro-Acceso (Chile), Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Económico y Social – FUSADES (El Salvador), Fundación Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (Nicaragua), Fundamedios (Ecuador), Instituto Prensa y Libertad de Expresión – IPLEX (Costa Rica), Instituto Nicaragüense de Estudios Humanísticos (Nicaragua), Instituto Prensa y Sociedad – IPYS (Perú), Participación Ciudadana (Dominican Republic), Transparencia por Colombia (Colombia), Trust for the Americas (OAS), así como algunos integrantes del Comité Consultivo de la Alianza, integrado por: Eduardo Bertoni (Director of the Centro de Estudios de Libertad de Expresión - CELE, Universidad de Palermo), Rigoberto Ochoa (UN Representative for Guatemala and Honduras on Human Rights), Juan Pablo Olmedo (President of Consejo por la Transparencia, Chile), Carlos Pimentel (Director of the Transparency Area of Participación Ciudadana, Dominican Republic), Roberto Saba (Dean of the Law School, Universidad de Palermo) and Ernesto Villanueva (Head of the Legal Science Department,UNAM).
It is a great honor for IDEA that the Regional Alliance members considered this a leading case that will contribute to consolidate democracy in Paraguay and the right to access information in the region.
