Public bodies engaged in funding and delivering aid should guarantee the right of access to information, both through proactive publication of information and by establishing mechanisms by which everyone can request and receive information.

Public bodies engaged in aid should respect everyone’s right to request information without the need to justify the request and without any citizenship or residency requirements. The procedures for requesting information should be simple and free; only actual copying and postage may be charged. Information held by public bodies should be provided to the public within pre-defined timeframes, subject only to limited exceptions that are consistent with international law. Everyone should be guaranteed a right to appeal refusals to provide information, as well as to appeal any failures to respond or other obstacles to receiving information to an independent body empowered to issue binding decisions.

In international law, the right of access to information only applies to public bodies and to private bodies performing public functions as designated by national law. Given the importance of transparency for accountability and effectiveness in the aid system, all actors engaged in funding and delivering aid should develop appropriate systems to allow the public access to information. Public bodies engaged in funding and delivering aid should ensure that third parties who spend aid on their behalf provide information to the public, either directly or through the donors' access to information regimes.

All donor governments and their agencies should meet the standards of their own access to information regimes in all the countries where they operate, regardless of whether the recipient country has similar laws. They should grant access to information by citizens of recipient countries in the same way that they would their own citizens.