Finalist — Individual Award: Richard Calland
Fighting for the right of access to information is at the heart of what Richard Calland is about. He believes that the lack of information — or information poverty, as he calls it — is one of the main causes of a lack of development.
“The link between development generally, social economic rights specifically, and access to information is a very important one,” he says. “The right to information is actually a leverage right. It is an instrument for advancing other rights — the right to water, housing and so on.
“If you don’t know what is going on, then you are in a weak position to argue your case. Access to information is vital to development.” He does not only advocate the right to access to information, he also teaches it as one of his specialisations at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
Calland’s associations are interconnected, centred on the right of access to information in one way or another. He is currently director of the economic governance programme at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, which he helped create in 1995.
He also serves as part-time executive director of the Open Democracy Advice Centre, a law centre based in Cape Town that specialises in Right to Know, an organisation he founded in 2000.
In recent years he served as an expert consultant to the Carter Center, the foundation led by former United States president Jimmy Carter, advising on various transparency projects in Bolivia, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Peru and Mali.
“I regard myself as a social entrepreneur,” he says, “in the sense that what I try to do is to be innovative in creating new organisations.” Calland’s most recent creations include the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and the inauguration of the International Transparency School at UCT.
The judges applauded him for his remarkable contribution to developing governance in South Africa and the region and his innovative leadership in initiating many effective public- interest campaigns over the years.