Department of Health v. Information Commissioner and Rt Hon John Healey MP and Nicholas Cecil
The U.K. First-Tier Tribunal of the General Regulatory Chamber for Information Rights held that a Transitional Risk Register (“TRR”), relating to sweeping changes to the country’s National Health System (“NHS”), should be disclosed under The Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) but that a Strategic Risk Register, relating to the changes, was exempt from disclosure. The court found that a public authority must release risk registers evaluating health policy if the request is made when policy consultation and formulation has been largely completed, but not during a period of consultation and when the register includes more sensitive policy information. In the present case, the Court ruled in favor of the public interest in transparency because at the time of the TRR request, the Report largely covered operational and implementation risks being faced by the Department of Health (“DOH”), rather than direct policy considerations. On the other hand, the Court found that the public interest in the Government having safe space to formulate policy took precedence at the time of the SRR request because the request was made at a time when the government was engaged in ongoing policy deliberations.
South Africa: Manuel v Economic Freedom Fighters – The Legal Consequences of Fake News
This post originally appeared on the Inforrm blog and is reproduced with permission of the author, Dario Milo. “Fake news” – a term ironically made popular…
Loopholes in Election advertising on Facebook and Instagram in Brazil
This article was written and published on 14 February 2022 by Tow Fellow Patricia Campos Mello for Folha De S.Paulo and was translated from Portuguese to English for…
Ethiopian Council of Ministers Regulation for the Implementation of the State of Emergency
Overview Ethiopia’s Council of Ministers issued the following Regulations regarding the implementation of the State of Emergency Declaration 3/2020, which went into effect on April…
Arrest of Inter-Faith Activist and Columbia Global Freedom of Expression expert Maytham Al Salman
New York, 10 August 2015 – Columbia Global Freedom of Expression urges the Bahrain Government to drop, immediately and unconditionally, all charges and the travel…
Agreements with platforms for elections in Brazil fall short of policies in the U.S.
This article published on 15 February 2022 was written by Tow Fellow Patricia Campos Mello for Folha De S.Paulo and was translated from Portuguese to English for the…
Jakarta Recommendations on Freedom of Expression in the Context of Religion
The Jakarta Recommendations are the outcome of discussions at a regional consultation on “Expression, Opinion and Religious Freedoms in Asia”, held in Jakarta, Indonesia on…
South Africa: Defamation, Manuel v. Malema in the Supreme Court of Appeal
This post originally appeared on the Musing on Media blog and is reproduced with permission and thanks. It can also be found on Inforrm. The…
An interview with Agnès Callamard: The way forward
This interview was conducted by Sara Whyatt for IFEX on 11 November 2016. The interview was originally published on IFEX.org. Sara Whyatt: You have had…