The study that is available at http://www.article19.org/docimages/1707.pdf examinex international standards and trends, and outlines nine principles governing effective freedom-of-information laws. The survey also looks at the public disclosure policies of two international institutions - the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank.

The right to freedom of information, commonly understood as the right to access information held by public bodies, is now widely recognised as a fundamental human right. There is a massive global trend towards legal recognition of this right as countries around the world that aspire to democracy either have adopted, or are in the process of reparing, freedom of information laws. This represents an enormous change from even ten years ago, when less than one-half of the freedom of information laws now in place had been adopted