Madrid, 14 April 2015 - Transparency, accountability and participation must be at the heart of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Financing for Development (FfD) agenda according to a position paper published today by the Transparency, Accountability and Participation in Post-2015 (TAP) Network, which was supported by Access Info Europe and 26 other civil society organisations from around the world. According to the TAP Network, a lack of transparent and accountable governance has cost developing and emerging economies $6.6 trillion USD (€5.5 trillion) over the past decade alone. The TAP Network paper, disseminated to all UN Missions on

Madrid, 30 September 2014 - On the occasion of International Right to Know Day, Access Info Europe together with 130 other organisations has written an open letter to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, calling on him to recognise freedom of expression and the right to information in his Post-2015 report. The UN secretary General and his team are drafting a report on Post-2015 which will kick off formal negotiations for the Sustainable Development Goals next year. For the past couple of years, civil society groups from all over the world have been calling on states to ensure good governance and

Madrid, 17 March 2014 - Victoria Anderica from Access Info Europe participated yesterday in the television programme 'El Objetivo', in Spanish TV channel La Sexta, to talk about the lack of transparency surrounding migrant internment centres in Spain (Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros, CIEs). "In Spain we haven’t been able to access information about the CIEs, and this makes it very difficult for civil society to work on this area," said Victoria Anderica. You can watch the whole interview in Spanish here. Campaign on the right to information about CIEs Since 2013, Access Info Europe along with the Global Detention

Madrid, 24 February 2014 – Access Info Europe today formally signed the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, and reiterated its call for greater transparency of state surveillance of private communications. "In spite of the scandal which followed the Snowden revelations, we still have insufficient information about the nature, scale, and use by states of surveillance of private individuals," said Helen Darbishire, Executive Director of Access Info Europe. In November 2013, Access Info Europe and the Web Foundation initiated a letter, signed by 140 civil society organisations and individual leaders and thinkers including Aruna Roy

Madrid, 3 February 2014 - Access Info Europe along with 195 civil society organisations from around the world have called on the United Nations (UN) to put government accountability and independent media at the centre of a new framework for global development. The joint statement coordinated by ARTICLE 19 and the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) comes ahead of a meeting of the UN Open Working Group for Sustainable Development Goals, which takes place in New York this week - and will include further discussions on governance. You can see a full list of the signatories and the text

Madrid/London, 19 December 2013 - Access Info Europe, over 110 civil society organisations across the world, together with individual leaders and thinkers including Aruna Roy and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, have expressed concern that secret mass surveillance and the persecution of whistleblowers contradict the ideals of “open government”. The statement has been sent just as a White House Review Panel recommended that the US National Security Agency should be stripped of its power to collect telephone records in bulk. The groups are calling on Open Government Partnership (OGP) member governments to include specific commitments in their OGP Action Plans to overhaul

London, 1 November 2013 - OGP civil society organisations have expressed their concern, in a public statement made today, about the contraditions between recent revelations on disproportionate government surveillance on the one hand, and their OGP commitment to more transparent, accountable, responsive and effective government, on the other. It comes after the final plenary session on the first day of the London OGP Summit when Indian Human Rights campaigner Aruna Roy challenged US Secretary of State John Kerry on the revelations of mass surveillance of populations around the world by the US government. You can read a copy of the