In the skin of information. What you need to know about whistleblowers, a year after the adoption of a law supposed to protect them

Thanks to the law of March 21, 2022 on the protection of whistleblowers, the David against Goliath of the public interest and the common good are more and more numerous to want to make known dangers, risks and scandals. Referrals to the human rights defender, one of the authorities able to receive alerts, have increased by 50%. She also published on Friday March 31 a guide for those who wish to issue an alert.

Half of companies have an alert procedure

More than a year after its adoption, the assessment of the law is therefore rather positive. It makes it possible to launch the alert via external channels without having first alerted internally within the company, for example. A simpler and more protective approach, with new penalties also for the authors of gagging procedures. However, there is still a lot to do since only half of the companies have to date set up an internal alert procedure whereas it is normally compulsory.

#Alert launcher | THE #DefenderOfRights today publishes the “Whistleblower” guide to support them in their efforts.
https://t.co/Ofxzb6zBUY pic.twitter.com/m8hyPZFFB6

— Defender of rights (@Defenseurdroits) March 31, 2023

Some also regret that whistleblowers cannot be legal persons, associations for example. This is the case of sociologist Francis Chateauraynaud, inventor in 1996 of the whistleblower concept during a symposium on new risks, including mad cow disease. At the time, these citizens willing to take risks to bring out the truth were called whistleblowers or prophets of doom. At the end of the 90s, they therefore became whistleblowers, cousins ​​of the American “whistleblowers”. Whistleblowers for “those who whistle”, a 19th century expression that first qualified sailors whistling to warn of approaching danger.

Towards better consideration of alerts?

Reporting an imminent danger upstream is the original mission of whistleblowers. This was very well taken into account by the very first law of 2013, which was supposed to protect them and which first put forward the precautionary principle, obliging the administrations to openly investigate the alerts given. An obligation that has since disappeared. So of course protecting whistleblowers as individuals is essential. Seriously taking their warnings into account is just as important.

And it is undoubtedly on this point that the alert must now be launched so that the administrations are no longer content to acknowledge receipt, but take real public action to protect humans and nature from multiple dangers. imminent. Acting together after having identified the problems rather than feeling sorry for a system that is impossible to change. Because before being whistleblowers, they are above all citizens attached to essential values, necessary cogs for democracy in a complex world.