Brazil: New report evaluates how transparency surrounding the São Paulo water crisis has changed

https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/38425/en/brazil:-new-report-evaluates-how-transparency-surrounding-the-são-paulo-water-crisis-has-changed

In 2014 and 2015, hundreds of thousands of people in the metropolitan region of São Paulo lived with daily cuts to the water supply. The main water reservoir, the Cantareira System, responsible for supplying about 50% of the metropolitan population, almost collapsed. At the time, the public agencies responsible for management the crisis were widely criticised, particularly because of the lack of transparency in how the agencies were working to mitigate the situation.

This year's report shows that, although there has been some improvement since 2014, the situation is still critical, and a culture of secrecy remains. Latest news from july 2016 alert about a new water crisis this year.

Brazil: Courts of Justice marked by a lack of transparency

https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/38382/en/brazil:-courts-of-justice-marked-by-a-lack-of-transparency

ARTICLE 19's Brazil office has released a new report entitled "Paths of Transparency - the Access to Information Law and the Law Courts", published on 12 May to mark the anniversary of the Access to Information Law (AIL), which came into force in May 2012.

Four years after the entry into force of the "Lei de Acesso à Informação" (port.) https://www.acessoainformacao.gov.br/assuntos/conheca-seu-direito/a-lei-de-acesso-a-informacao , in english Access to Information Law (AIL), Courts of Justice throughout Brazil have still not adapted to the minimum standards of transparency recommended for public bodies. On the contrary, the current state of affairs shows that much remains to be done in this area.

In light of the provisions of the AIL and Resolution Nº 215 of the National Council of Justice, the report evaluates the performance of the Courts of Justice of Brazil's 27 federative units in the areas of "active transparency" and "passive transparency" (addressed in the "Administrative Transparency" section), as well as looking at other key themes such as "transparency in the judiciary" overall.

None of the courts fulfilled the six criteria adopted to evaluate "active transparency" (which concerns the availability of information on their websites). On this point, the Court of Justice of Sergipe was found to perform best, fulfilling five of the criteria. The Courts of Justice of Piauí and Rondônia performed worst, meeting just one of the criteria each.

Another alarming observation, in the analysis of "passive transparency", was that more than half (56.8%) of the requests for information sent to the courts were ignored. This percentage is even more striking when compared with the evaluation of federal courts in an ARTICLE 19 report released last year, where unanswered requests accounted for just 9.1%.