Bosnia and Herzegovina was the first state in the region to enact the law which guarantees the right to access information. Freedom of access to information laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina regulate only the reactive dimension of this right – the disclosure of information on request, while the proactive dimension of the right to access information is completely neglected by those laws. Therefore, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian legislation in this area lags behind international standards and does not follow other states’ advanced solutions with respect to the right to access information.

Besides, the aforementioned legislature is fragmented and incoherent, does not contain adequate legal protection with respect to the implementation of proactive measures, while this area is partly regulated by acts which are not at the required level in the hierarchy of sources of law.

This publication aims to provide some answers to the question of how Bosnia and Herzegovina can catch up with the standards and practices which were developed in the meantime in this field. Hence, the study offers a detailed presentation of international standards and other states’ positive practices in the domain of legislation and the institutional framework of proactive transparency, as well as an analysis of the relevant regulations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and establishes their fundamental flaws. Recommendations on the necessary amendments to the free access to information laws in BiH are intended for legislators and other stakeholders in this area.

The study is published within the project "Public Data Now - Civil Society Initiative for Open Government Policies and Practices", implemented by the Foundation Mediacentar Sarajevo, Analitika - Center for Social Research, and the European Journalism Centre (EJC), financed by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Sarajevo (MATRA program).

The study in local languages is available HERE.