Transnational Transparency: Why it Matters for Global Health

• In the days leading up to the announcement of the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, Edward Snowden and Chelsea/Bradley Manning had both made the shortlist of pundits and the public.
• The Nobel announcement preceded the first ever Global Transparency Week from 24-31 October 2013, an international effort by a group of organizations concerned with increasing openness in aid and development to spotlight how transparency could be used as a tool for accountability.
• Before 1990, only 14 countries had right-to-information (RTI) laws or regulations, but over 90 countries have them today, two-thirds of which were adopted since 2002.

These three developments are all signals of the rapid emergence of a powerful norm around transparency. Information transparency is widely recognized as a central pillar in good governance. Better access to information can strengthen the accountability of decision-makers, enable broad public debate on critical issues, and address power imbalances. In an era in which technology allows for instant, low-cost, global information flows, RTI policies hold tremendous potential for improving the quality of global governance. However, norms on transparency at the national level have not yet translated into analogous policies or practices at the international level.

The paper Transnational Transparency: Why does it Matter for Global Health?-that I have written for the ISGlobal Think Tank-argues that transparency is critical for global health by offering three illustrations: closed-door negotiations over trade agreements, which can contain provisions that are harmful for public health; the secretive investor-state dispute settlement processes of the global investment regime, which can tie the hands of governments to regulate for health; and pharmaceutical R&D, where lack of transparency can lead to skewed information on drug safety and efficacy, and provide a justification for unaffordable pricing. These are certainly not the only areas where transparency matters for health, but they illustrate the types of issues at stake.

These critiques of the trade, investment and pharmaceutical R&D systems are not new. But the importance of transparency has arguably not received the attention within the global health community that it should. This paper offers three simple, interlinked proposals for how to tap into the growing power of the transparency norm in governance: insisting on transparency in all policies, strengthening right-to-information regulations at national level, and pushing for RTI policies at international institutions. With several important exceptions (notably the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the World Bank) major international organizations such as the World Health Organization, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Intellectual Property Organization do not have RTI policies.

The mere existence of an RTI policy does not guarantee disclosure of the relevant information – pro-active use of such policies by civil society, journalists and academics is a crucial piece of the puzzle. And even when transparency and information are available, they are not in and of themselves enough to change the status quo. Nor is perfect information transparency in all cases realistic or necessarily desirable. But in an increasingly interconnected world, they are – as Snowden reminded us – formidable tools for change that should be adopted more systematically in policymaking processes that impact global health. In light of the many intractable challenges in protecting public health in global governance processes, the growing strength of the transparency norm means that broader adoption of RTI policies is relatively low-hanging fruit.

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