Information Sharing as a Human Right
Harold E. Pepinsky · 2021
In the Norwegian view, protection of human rights has paramount importance, and among these rights, as Asbjorn Eide notes, participation stands foremast. One object of the human rights movement as described by another Norwegian offers particular hope for building peace in a wartorn world — participation or information sharing. The tautology is that both crime and punishment are exercises of power, so that being more powerful practically by definition means having greater capacity to get away with crime and resist punishment. In criminology, Nils Christie stresses that attaining intimate knowledge of others and recognizing mutual dependence in participatory structures are key conditions for peaceful community life. Given the fact that Norwegians are relatively inclined to peace and disinclined to punishment and violence, we might do well to take special note of the central place participatory decisionmaking occupies in Norwegian thinking.