Right to Information Guide for Myanmar local development initiatives. This, in turn, helps improve decision-making processes and implementation of projects. For the same reason, greater transparency can also help ensure that development efforts reach their intended targets. 1.3. Relations with Citizens When governments become more open and share information on a formal basis (i.e. under the right to information law rather than just informally through personal contacts), this can help limit rumours and build a more solid basis for the information that circulates in society. This, in turn, helps build better overall relations between citizens and the government based more on trust and information, rather than rumours. 1.4. Accountability Accountability and good governance are core values for all democracies and essential to building public trust and signaling a transition to more open and inclusive approach to governance. The essence of accountability is that members of the public have a right to scrutinise and debate the actions of their leaders and to assess the performance of the government. This is possible only if they can access information about matters of important public concern, such as the economy, social systems, unemployment and environmental performance. For Myanmar, in addition, the right to information has particular salience in terms of transitional justice as a means of both reckoning with past abuses and reasserting the rule of law. In 2005, independent expert Diane Orentlicher noted the following: Every people has the inalienable right to know the truth about past events concerning the perpetration of heinous crimes and about the circumstances and reasons that led, through massive or systematic violations, to the perpetration of those crimes. Full and effective exercise of the right to the truth provides a vital safeguard against the recurrence of violations.6 More recently, the right to truth, which is closely linked to the right to information, has been affirmed in transitional justice contexts by both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. 1.5. Improving Administrative and Organisational Efficiency Although implementing effective right to information systems requires some resources, there is evidence to suggest that these systems can also promote efficiencies, by fostering public oversight. Having a set of “fresh eyes” look over processes can lead to useful inputs for how 6 Report of the independent expert to update the Set of principles to combat impunity, Diane Orentlicher: Addendum, Updated Set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity, 8 February 2005, E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1, Principle 2, https://undocs.org/E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1. The Centre for Law and Democracy is a non-profit human rights organisation working internationally to provide legal expertise on foundational rights for democracy. 3