Legal Limits on Single-Use Plastics and Microplastics: A Global Review of National Laws and Regulations

This report provides a global overview on the progress of countries in passing laws and regulations that limit the manufacture, import, sale, use and disposal of selected single-use plastics and microplastics which have a great impact in the production of marine litter

Avoiding the resource curse : spotlight on oil in Uganda

Uganda has made significant progress in codifying the rights of access to information (ATI) and participation and toward putting in place the institutional infrastructure, including a regulatory framework for the oil sector. Political roll-backs that are re-concentrating power in the executive branch of government and the growing scale of known oil reserves however, may jeopardize these advances. This paper reviews the Petroleum Bill in terms of exemptions to ATI. The government has not released to the public, or even to Parliament, important information regarding the oil sector, including the five Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) with oil exploration companies

Uganda’s access to information regulations : another bump in the road to transparency; comments

Due to copyright restrictions, this item cannot be sharedThe paper reviews Access to Information (ATI) legislation and regulation and their effects in Uganda. While the release of the ATI Regulations is a welcome development, there is concern that a number of the provisions create obstacles. Current ATI Regulations continue a downward trend of limiting the right of Ugandan citizens to access government-held information. The Regulations affect three areas of particular significance: the cost of accessing information; the procedures that citizens must follow to request information; and the guidance provided for implementing public agencies

Active and passive resistance to openness : the transparency model for freedom of information acts in Africa; three case studies

This Working Paper is part of the Access to Information in Africa Project and is based on preliminary research supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada (IDRC) which will take place over the next two years in Ghana, South Africa and Uganda. Working papers contain preliminary research, analysis, findings, and recommendations. They are circulated to stimulate timely discussion and critical feedback and to influence ongoing debate on emerging issues. Most working papers are eventually published in another form and their content may be revised.While more than 80 countries have passed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), only six are African countries: South Africa (2000), Angola (2002), Zimbabwe (2002), Uganda (2005), Ethiopia (2008), and Liberia (2010). This paper uses an analysis of the constitutions and FOIAs in Uganda and South Africa and the FOI Bill in Ghana to look at the ways in which the design of FOIAs allows government to actively and/or passively resist openness and transparency, and to exploit power imbalances between government and citizens. FOIAs need to be drafted squarely within the scope of constitutional language

Transparency and Open Government: Reporting on the Disclosure of Information

This paper provides a summary of data about requests, complaints and appeals published by central reporting bodies in eight countries. It examines available data from the most recent year of aggregated data—ranging between 2011 and 2013. It assessed these statistics for Brazil, India, Jordan, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, The United Kingdom, and the United States. Through this assessment it provides trends in how countries are collecting and publishing these data and finds that practices are far from standardized and data are often unavailable or incomplete