Set up an Alaveteli instance covering international bodies

[RichardTaylor]

Perhaps this could be run as a collaboration between teams already running Alaveteli installs?

We could cover bodies such as the United Nations, and its agencies such as the World Health Organization and other transnational bodies with a public role such as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) and NATO.

Perhaps this is an idea to put to the group

https://groups.google.com/g/alaveteli-users

rather than raise as an issue here.

[RichardTaylor]

Such a new and exciting project might help with recruitment and retention of volunteers, it might also be useful for climate activists.

[RichardTaylor]

Note the possibility that such a project could be managed by those already running different Alaveteli installations and serve a secondary purpose of bringing those people together to work on a project. The project could foster better communication between the teams and help with sharing ideas and ways of working.

[RichardTaylor]

A WhatDoTheyKnow user wanted to make a request to The European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights is an international court set up in 1959. It rules on individual or State applications alleging violations of the civil and political rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Court_in_brief_ENG.pdf

If we had an Alaveteli for international bodies this is a body we could list.

(The court is not a European Union body so not eligible for listing on Ask the EU)

[RichardTaylor]

Reasons not to do this:

• Running one Alaveteli site is enough work for anyone / any organisation! (However once you have the knowledge/procedures in place for one, adding another might not be so much extra work)
• Alaveteli sites work well where public bodies have a legal right of reply, they might not work so well if bodies can just ignore requests - though they will publicly show what's being requested and not provided so might help inform debate on opening organisations up.

[RichardTaylor]

The World Health Organisation has as a policy of releasing, on request:

information which is not publicly available on the WHO website, but is not classified by the Organization as confidential information

https://www.who.int/suggestions/InfoDisclosurePolicy.pdf

[RichardTaylor]

The British-Irish Council could be listed on such an installation.

The British–Irish Council (BIC) (Irish: Comhairle na Breataine-na hÉireann) is an intergovernmental organisation that aims to improve collaboration between its members in a number of areas including transport, the environment, and energy.[1] Its membership comprises the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the governments of the Crown Dependencies of the UK: Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British%E2%80%93Irish_Council

The UK ICO deemed the British-Irish Council not subject to the UK FOI Act in a decision in case IC-113538-F4Q4

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-information/complaints-and-concerns-data-sets/complaints-under-s50-of-the-freedom-of-information-act-2000/ https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/data-sets/4020228/202104-202106-foi-eir.csv

[RichardTaylor]

Sports governing bodies could be listed:

• Union of European Football Associations - https://www.uefa.com/
• The International Cricket Council - https://www.t20worldcup.com/
• FIFA - the international governing body of association football - https://www.fifa.com/
• Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) - the governing body for a number of motor-racing events including Formula One

See discussion on listing sports governing bodies on WhatDoTheyKnow in the UK at https://github.com/mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme/issues/839