Principles of the Right of Access to Official Information in Latin America

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point the 10 principles of right to access information declared in 2008 by the Inter-American Juridical Committee (CJI) of the Organisation of American States (OAS), and the OAS’s Inter-American Model Law on Access to Public Information, published in 2010, which systematise the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It is a comparative study, which – in light of the theory of fundamental rights – contrasts the level of influence of the Inter-American System of Human Rights in terms of the legislation and judicial precedents of the 18 Latin-American countries that are of Iberian origin and subject to the American Convention on Human Rights (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela). Consequently, it points out the positive and negative aspects of the national laws governing information access in Latin America.