Right to Know Day around the world - Sierra Leone

Organizer: The Freedom of Information Coalition-Sierra Leone
Event: Right to Know campaign
Date: September, 2006

Description:
The Freedom of Information Coalition-Sierra Leone (FOIC-SL) is joining Freedom of Information/Freedom of Expression groups in over seventy countries around the world to celebrate the “The Right to Know Day” in Sierra Leone for the first time, on September 28, 2006; and we ask for your timely financial, material, moral and patriotic support to ensure that this celebration is a success.

Activities planned for this day would include: a rally on the streets of Freetown; a pop concert; radio panel discussions; the pasting up of posters, and circulation of leaflets (leaflet PDF 103 KB; leaflet PDF 86KB) a pop concert of leading musicians; meeting of individual media, civil society, and political leaders. We hope that this activity would lubricate the FOIC-SL’s efforts in securing ONE MILLION SIGNATURES AND THUMB PRINTS of citizens and foreign residents who are supportive of a Freedom of Information Act in Sierra Leone before General Elections-2007, and accelerate FOIC’s effort in striving to get Parliament to pass into law the Freedom of Information Bill that has been presented to it. The FOIC-SL has received support from the Westminister Foundation in the United Kingdom for the latter effort.

Authoritative studies have been done in recent times that show that a “Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA) in a country tremendously boosts the fight against corruption, and by helping to create a level playing field in the private sector, FOIA stimulates genuine capitalist competition, which spurs economic growth, and, in developing countries, FOIA helps to create a climate for meaningful democracy, social and political stability. The lack of a Freedom of Information Act is the reverse of the above – ensuring that poverty festers, engendering fear, distrust of the public sector especially, mal-development, and, inexorably, social and political instability. For a country like Sierra Leone just emerging from one of the most nauseous and brutal wars in human history, a lack of FOIA could be a factor in a relapse back to our brutish past.

The media, as the barometer of, and watchdog for, society, would benefit immensely with a FOIA, but, the beneficiaries for FOIA would be the entire Sierra Leonean society (from medical doctors, lawyers, industrialists, mobile service companies, teachers…. to students, farmers, market women, petty traders, soldiers, etc.), including those businesses that have significant investments in the country.