Speakers at the talks asked the government to immediately scrap all restrictive laws like the Official Secrets Act and to enact the draft Right to Information Act that has been gathering dust with the law ministry since 2002.

Manusher Jonno (MJ), an initiative promoting human rights and good governance in the country, organised the conference titled 'Right to Information: National and Regional Perspective' at the Bangladesh Institute of Administration and Management (Biam) as a part of its ongoing campaign to institute people's right to know.

The event brought together a number of resource persons from home and abroad, jurists, media leaders and professionals, rights activists, academics, bureaucrats, NGO leaders and other eminent civil society members as well as the partner organisations of the MJ.

"Right to information is the oxygen of democracy," declared Maja Dhun Daruwala, one of the panellists and director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, India.

"In our work across the globe, we have found two things to be elemental for people's wellbeing. They are access to justice and access to information. These two again are inter-linked, with the former depending to a large extent on the latter," Daruwala observed while speaking at the plenary presided over by MJ Steering Committee Chairperson Hameeda Hossain.

The other panellists were Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathan leader Aruna Roy of Rajsthan and Delhi Public Grievances Commission Chairperson Shailaja Chandra from India, legal consultant to the World Bank Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena from Sri Lanka and MJ Team Leader Shaheen Anam.

Aruna Roy described how their movement to ensure people's minimum wage and protect land rights in six Rajsthan districts turned into a war on widespread corruption and then into a campaign for access to information for social audit and bringing transparency and accountability at all levels of administration. The graft was so pervasive that only 15 percent of the development funds, she said, used to reach the target beneficiaries.

Their local movement eventually became a national one. "The demand was made from the grassroots and we put pressure on the political parties to include it in their manifesto," Roy said, adding they also compelled the political parties to implement the commitments.

She said corruption at their locality reduced by 50 percent after the national Right to Information Act 2005 was enacted in May last.

Shailaja Chandra in her turn illustrated how the Delhi Right to Information Act 2001 has complemented in grievance mitigation by her commission. "My experience in Delhi shows the law has made government officials more accountable," she noted.

The conference host, Shaheen Anam, said previously access to information was considered as an important development tool, but lately it has been widely recognised as a fundamental human right, which has both a rights and a governance perspective.

The Bangladesh Law Commission, she said, drafted the proposed Right to Information Act 2002 without any consultation with the socio-political stakeholders. The draft, which is yet to be tabled at parliament as a bill, tells nothing about repealing the Official Secrets Act of the British colonial people. She also listed a number of other restrictive laws and legal provisions including the Evidence Act, the Rules of Business, Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure that need to go to provide the people with free access to information.

Anam decried the tendency among both the government and the non-government quarters to carry on with "the culture of secrecy" and urged all from the grassroots to the social elites to join and bolster the campaign for the legislation, as otherwise "we may not see this law enacted at all."

The situation in Sri Lanka in this regard is much similar to Bangladesh, observed Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena. There, too, an archaic Official Secrets Act keeps information confined to the people in power. Pinto-Jayawardena was a member of the team that drafted a right to information act and submitted to the then information minister and prime minister of Sri Lanka in 2001. But, the document has been put on cold storage since then, she regretted.

Four parallel workshops on various issues related to the conference theme and a roundtable on the role of media in promoting the right followed the plenary.

With Gono Swashtha Kendra Chairman Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury as the moderator, Unnayan Shamannay Chairperson Dr Atiur Rahman presented the keynote paper in the workshop on Socio-political Context of Right to Information. The workshop recommended forming a national platform to campaign for the law.

Speakers in the workshop on Women and Right to Information stressed the need to properly empower women to enable them to press for their rights to information as well as other basic rights. Prof Mahbuba Nasreen of Dhaka University (DU) presented the keynote.

Prof Borhan Uddin Khan of DU law department presented the keynote paper in the workshop on Access to information: Violation and Justice, chaired by BLAST Executive Director (ED) Shamsul Bari.

Development Research Network ED Dr Ananya Raihan read out the keynote paper in the workshop on Access to Information and Poverty Alleviation, chaired by Brac ED Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury.

Power and Participation Research Centre ED Hossain Zillur Rahman moderated the roundtable on Freedom of Information and Role of Media, with Maja Daruwala and Pinto-Jayawardena among the discussants. The discussants recommended provision for inclusion of e-governance in the draft of the Right to Information Act. They said the draft law should be open to scrutiny by media people and legal experts so as not to leave it to the whims of the lawmakers.

Bangladesh Observer Editor Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, The Daily Star Editor Mahfuz Anam, Independent Editor Mahbubul Alam, Prothom Alo Editor Matiur Rahman, The New Age Executive Editor Nurul Kabir, and AP Bureau Chief Farid Hossain, Prof Sakhawat Ali Khan, head of the department of Media Studies and Journalism, University of Liberal Arts, attended the roundtable, among others.