The latest version of Morocco’s draft right to information law (Draft Law No. 31.13) “is substantially weaker than the draft published in August 2013,” according to an analysis by the Centre for Law and Democracy.
An assessment of the draft Law using the RTI Rating assessment tool (www.RTI-Rating.org) gives the latest draft 65 points out of a possible 150, putting it in the bottom 20 percent of all countries (83rd place out of 98), compared to 100 points or 27th place for the 2013 draft.
“We welcome the Government of Morocco’s efforts to adopt right to information legislation,” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of CLD. “But the current draft is simply not strong enough to provide effective access to information for the people of Morocco.”
The CLD analysis says:
The current draft is substantially weaker than the 2013 draft in many areas, including scope of application, procedural rules, the regime of exceptions and promotional measures. Significantly, the proposal to establish a dedicated oversight body, in the form of a national information commission, has been dropped with this function instead being added to the work of the ombudsman.
The Cabinet in July proposed the new version. (See previous FreedomInfo.org article.)
Filed under: What's New