Thank you, Helen!
The UNCAC Coalition mourns the loss of its former Chair, Helen Darbishire.
Helen Darbishire, who passed away on 18 October 2024, was a human rights advocate who shaped and expanded the right to information, open government and the fight for transparency and accountability across Europe and around the globe. She founded and led the NGO Access Info Europe and served as Chair and Co-Chair of the Coalition from 2020 to 2023.
A coalition builder and a leader by nature, she was also active in the Open Government Partnership, including as a member of the OGP Steering Committee. Over the years, Helen supported NGOs and campaigns to advance freedom of information legislation in many countries across Europe and beyond.
Beyond her profound professional impact, Helen was a kind and fun person – somebody who brought positive energy to any encounter and empowered others.
We are forever grateful for her inspiration, commitment, and support for our network and our broader civil society community.
Helen’s unwavering passion for advancing the right to information brought her around the world – from London to Paris with Article 19, from Budapest to New York with Open Society Institute, and finally to Madrid, where she settled and established the NGO Access Info in 2006 with the goal of promoting the right of access to information across Europe and globally.
Her choice was personal and professional, intuitive and smart: at the time, Spain did not have an access to information law and was the largest European country without one. Relentlessly, with passion and patience, she built allies among NGOs, journalists, and public servants. She promoted the importance of transparency in government-held information among Spain’s political leaders. The country’s Access to Information Law was adopted at the end of 2013, followed by additional laws at the local level. It was not the end of the road but the beginning of real access to public information. Helen enthusiastically pushed for compliance with the law and didn’t hesitate to take public bodies to court when they didn’t provide the requested information.
All over Europe, she and the team of Access Info encouraged, supported and trained journalists, activists, students, groups of citizens and people across all sectors to exercise the right to information. She also shared her expertise in other parts of the world, helping to draft and pass access to information laws and working to elevate transparency practices, including through strategic litigation at the national and EU levels. She never lost hope in the people and in what we could achieve if we campaigned effectively, used the right tools, and took advantage of opportunities.
Above all, she saw the potential of transparency and access to information. She wanted the right to information to be recognized as a fundamental human right connected to freedom of expression. A founding member of the Freedom of Information Advocates Network, she had called since 2002 for the celebration of a Right to Know Day. In 2019, the United Nations declared 28 September the International Day for Universal Access to Information.
Access Info, jointly with the Center for Law and Democracy, set up and maintains the Global Right to Information Rating, which assesses the strength of freedom of information laws around the globe and serves as a powerful tool to build momentum for adopting and strengthening such laws.
Helen wanted to show that access to information is key to realizing other rights: to free opinion and assembly, but also to health, food, education, and a sustainable environment. And that quest brought her to open government and the fight against corruption. With Acces Info, a pioneer on many fronts, she fought for whistleblower protection laws, for the regulation of lobbying and transparency in public decision-making, including in the European Union, for empowering transparency councils, for mainstreaming transparency in the public administration and expanding it to private actors.
One of the last battles she was engaged in was the opening of beneficial ownership and company registers as vital information to prevent and detect corruption.
In the UNCAC Coalition, she and Access Info found many allies and quickly connected with our wide anti-corruption network. During her tenure, Access Info was barred from participating in the 9th session of the UNCAC Conference of the States Parties (CoSP), along several other civil society organizations. Commenting on this unfair and unjustified exclusion, Helen said:
“As the global anti-corruption community meets in Sharm El-Sheikh, it is unacceptable that there is a veto on the participation of some organisations based on opaque allegations by just one government. This hugely reduces space for civil society in UNCAC processes and undermines the effectiveness of an event crucial to advancing action on anti-corruption.”
Profoundly humanist, Helen marked the lives of all those who crossed her path. We remain deeply grateful for the generosity, enthusiasm and wisdom she brought to the never-ending task of making the world a better place through more information and equal rights for all. We will deeply miss her determination, optimism and advice in the face of any challenge – with her involved, any challenge seemed achievable.
We rest assured that her legacy will live on and will continue to inspire our work.