Societal Verification

Societal verification may be applied to a wide variety of international agreements (and corresponding national regulations), including those pertaining to the environment, human rights, trade, labour, arms control and disarmament. But the requirements for, and problems of, societal verification in these areas are different. As a result, it is hard to develop a general model of societal verification and its implementation. To begin with, there are discrete actors to be monitored, including:

• commercial and non-commercial companies;
• government departments and agencies;
• various parts of the "military/industrial complex";
• public and private laboratories;
• public and private research and development centres;
• police and security forces;
• national governments; and
• international organisations

There are also diverse aggregations of interest, influence and power to be handled. Consequently, the implementation of societal verification in disparate areas requires different types of coalition-building and separate forms of regulation and organisation. Varying degrees of transparency and assorted types of whistleblower protection are also necessary….

There is a widespread view that in non-democratic countries with little respect for individual human liberties and rights, citizens’ reporting and whistle-blowing are likely to be ineffective. Yet, reporting by civil rights groups and other non-governmental organisations (like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Bellona Foundation) has for many years played an important role in strengthening compliance with international agreements even in non-democratic states, especially in the areas of human rights and the environment. Amnesty International’s reports are an important resource for anyone monitoring state behaviour with respect to human rights. Even in a non-democratic system, a government cannot be absolutely sure that persons with knowledge of clandestine activities will not transmit the information to the international community….

To make social verification more likely, the following steps would be helpful:

• the legal right of all citizens and citizen groups to engage in societal verification needs to be guaranteed by each international agreement and by the legal system of each state part;
• explicit legal protection against discrimination and criminal prosecution should be established for all (natural and legal) persons reporting violations or attempted violations of an international agreement;
• the right to raise funds for citizens’ verification purposes, within and outside the country, must be guaranteed so that citizen groups obtain financial resources for their work; and
• regulations concerning freedom of information and openness in science should be promulgated.

Freedom of information means that records in the possession of public agencies and departments of the executive branch are accessible to citizens. Those seeking information should no longer be required to prove that they are entitled to obtain the data and have a special need for it. Instead, the "need to know" standard must be replaced by a "right to know" doctrine. The government or head of the relevant public agency must be required to justify the legally protected need for secrecy (for instance, properly classified documents, internal personal rules and practices, confidential business data, internal government communications, personal privacy and law enforcement). But it should be established, by law, that international and domestic legislation must not protect illegal "state secrets." Information on violations of international or domestic law by state officials cannot be kept confidential.

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