Abstract:

The importance of information and its impact on the state and society was already recognized by ancient statesmen. However, this was a right that was suppressed for a long time, mainly for strategic reasons. It was only three years after the end of Second World War that political will was found to anchor this right in a generally binding international document. This act founded the adoption of other international documents dealing with this area of human rights. Access to truthful, timely and complete information is a prerequisite for the proper functioning of human society and for our decisions to make sense. The aim of our paper is to review selected international documents guaranteeing the right to information. From a systematic point of view, the paper is divided into four parts, in addition to the introduction, the objective with the methodology and the conclusion. Each of them is focused on a selected document in the field of international information law. For the purposes of the paper, we used several scientific methods of research, especially description, analysis, synthesis, deduction, logic or comparison, but also doctrinal interpretation of international documents. The result of our efforts is the identification of the right to access information from the perspective of international law, the analysis of the key international documents conferring the right to information, as well as the answer to the research question, even in the period of freedom since 1948 until 1989, the right to information was guaranteed by international documents.