Exemptions: a limited scope
Number of countries and territories that responded to UNESCO Survey on Public Access to Information
| Year | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | 69 | 102 | 123 |
Out of the 114 responding countries and territories with access to information legal guarantees, 96% (110) reported that their respective legal guarantees explicitly mention having permissible exemptions that are elaborated in well-defined categories and terms of which certain requests for information may be legally denied.
The graphic hereunder shows the proportion of permissible exemptions in access to information legal guarantees, as indicated by the respondents.
Permissible exemptions in Access to Information legal guarantees (in percentage) in 2022
Certain types of metadata, when aggregated, can reveal personal information that can be no less sensitive than the actual content of requests or appeals and can give an insight into an individual’s behaviour, including someone’s movements, social relationships, political activities, private preferences and identity.
Keeping the data disaggregated prevents such risks. Therefore, access to information oversight institutions in 28 out of 44 countries and territories that provided specific data on ‘Access to Information requests’ in 2021 reported that they indeed kept data on the reasons for non-disclosure and partial disclosure on the basis of the legitimate exemptions disaggregated.
As it relates to specific data on ‘Appeals’ in the same period, 33 out of 60 respondents reported that they kept disaggregated data.
Countries and territories that keep disaggregated data for non-disclosure and partial disclosure based on the permissible exemptions in 2021
These data confirm the overall existence of a limited scope of exemptions for protected interests: human rights (such as privacy) and public interests (such as national security), that are explicitly mentioned in the national access to information guarantees. At the same time, the number of countries and territories that keep data disaggregated on refusals to requests for information on the basis of exceptions is still low.