On Monday, the Afghan parliament finally approved the long-pending Access to Information (ATI) law. While this is good news both for public and the press family, the law still requires to be passed from the senate and then be endorsed by the president of Afghanistan. This law is based on article 50 of Afghanistan’s constitution. The article ensures Afghan people their right to access information held by the government “in accordance with provision of law.” Article 50 also provides that the right “has no limits, unless violation of the rights of the others”.

The parliament has approved the law by brining important changesin certain articles of the law including article number 15. "The first and second clauses of article 15 respectively say that if a person's humanitarian rights are violated or if a person's honor is in danger, then information about the person should not be provided to anyone," Kabul MP Abdul Hafiz Mansour said. "The first clause provides a reasonfor government institutions for not releasing information. Therefore, we wanted the first clause to be excluded."

The MPs also raised concern about clause six of article 15, which stated that information should not be released if it could affect Afghanistan's relations with other countries or the country's national sovereignty and national security. MPs believed that keeping the clause could provide ground for the government to withhold information from the public.

Approval of this has been longstanding demand of media watchdog Nai which has been calling on the government to bring the ATI draft law into legislation process. The draft was kept by the cabinet for about two years and then for by the parliament for about a year for unknown reasons. Many believed the delay in approving the law was due to the fact that the law would bind the government to disclose information about the dirty business of the high-ranking government officials involved in corruption and nepotism.

While it is still uncertain how long it will take for the law to get through the upper house of the parliament and presidential palace, it can bring Afghanistan out of the list of countries where there is no legislation on access to information. The greatest merit of ATI is that it will help people be informed about government activities thus helping in accountability and transparency in government line ministries. Afghanistan, being one of the most corrupt countries of the world, needs to immediately put ATI law into action to support anti-corruption efforts.