Some 25 freedom of information advocates and practitioners from the Caucasus region convened on May 8-11, 2009, to compare the laws and the practices across the region and to outline some common strategies to strengthen the right of access in these countries. Organized by the National Security Archive together with its partners from Tbilisi State University, the workshop included participants from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, and the United States, and representatives of the leading FOI organizations in each country, meeting for two days of presentations and discussion in Telavi, and a session at the State Security Archive of Georgia in Tbilisi.
The workshop discussion also illuminated the common legacy of the Soviet past in the represented countries, where citizens never had the right of access, and where the right of the government to control information still lingers in the public mind. Most participants described specific problems in implementation of the existing laws and regulations in each country. While the actual texts of the laws in the region are generally very good (better than the language in the proposed European convention, for example), actual implementation lags behind international standards.
The need for more and regular training was put forward as a major goal of ongoing work. All agreed that it would be best if training programs involved lawyers and journalists together at a minimum, but ideally also judges, government officials in charge of FOI implementation and academics. Such training workshops could be organized in each country on a regular basis, and periodically could bring participants from the entire region.
