Open Development: Access to Information and the Sustainable Development Goals

"This report reviews the current state of the right of access to information across the world to provide a baseline for future assessments over the lifetime of the 2030 Agenda. It finds that there has been significant incorporation of the right in well over half of UN Member States. The right has now been adopted into law or policy in 118 countries around the world (61 percent of UN Member States) from the largest countries (China, India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico) to some of the smallest (St Vincent and the Grenadines, Vanuatu) covering 89 percent of the world’s population. In addition, 90 countries have adopted explicit constitutional guarantees. Many countries are also implementing transparency initiatives such as e-government or open data which supplement the right but generally do not fully ensure the right of access to all information."