Jordan Parliament approves Access to Information draft law Proposed bill gives government control over information

April 26, 2007

AAI- Amman: The Lower House of Parliament on Wednesday, April 25, 2007, endorsed the draft access to information law that gives government wide powers to control information flow and deprives the citizen from accessing basic information.

The draft law allows for the establishment of an Information Council whose task –theoretically- is to ensure providing information and looking into complaints. However, the council consists of six government representatives, one armed forces representative and two government established human rights and information centres.

Discussions of the draft law, considered as one of the most important freedoms laws, was done at haste and was shrouded with secrecy. It took the designed committee less than half an hour to introduce amendments and less than two hours for the parliament to discuss and endorse amendments. No specialists or activists were invited to pour in their suggestions.

While the law is hailed as the first bill of its kind in the Arab region, it highly restricts access to information rather than providing it.

Article 10 of the law prohibits the Council from disclosing information that has the nature of discrimination in religion, sectarianism, race, color or sex.

Also Article 13 a of the law bans citizens from obtaining information that contains secrets and protected documents;

Article 13 also prohibits citizens from obtaining:

13b: classified documents;

13c: special secrets related to national defense or state security or foreign policy;

13d: information that contains analysis or recommendations or suggestions or consultations which the official has but was not decided upon. The information also includes correspondence and exchanged information among the different governmental departments;

13e: information and personal files related to the people’s educational, medical or employment records as well as their accounts, bank transfers or professional secrets;

13f: personal correspondence through mail or telegrams or phone or any other way with the governmental departments;

13g: information of which disclosure would impact negotiations between the kingdom and any other state or party.

In addition, the law does not contain any article that inflicts penalty on the Information Council or the official when they don’t disclose information to the citizen who requested it. The law also does not define what is secretive or classified information that should not be disclosed. The law also defines the seeker of the information as the person who seeks information “and who has a legitimate interest or a legitimate reason,” (Article 7). The law that has 20 provisions dedicates its most part to the government-appointed council responsibilities and the other part to the list of prohibited subjects. Rather than breaking the taboos related to access to information, the law reiterates the bans on information that exists in other laws.