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Number of Free Countries Is Declining, Study Finds

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By Jane A. Morse

The number of free countries is steadily declining, according to the latest findings by Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization that monitors the state of democracy and human rights around the world.

In its recently released report, Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House found that only 87 — two fewer than 2009 — of the world’s 194 countries could be designated as truly free. Sixty countries were designated as “partly free,” and 47 were considered “not free.”

Global freedom — as measured by the level of protection of political rights and civil liberties of citizens — suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom House. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40 years Freedom House has been issuing the surveys. Currently, only 43 percent of the world’s population lives in countries considered to be free.

What’s to blame for the decline?  Bolder authoritarian regimes coupled with inadequate resistance from democratic countries, says Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House.

“The increasing truculence of the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes has coincided with a growing inability or unwillingness on the part of the world’s democracies to meet the authoritarian challenge,” Puddington says in the report. He warns that “if the world’s democracies fail to unite and speak out in defense of their own values, despots will continue to gain momentum.”

The United States, however, is one democracy that has been making democracy and human rights a major part of its foreign policy. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Posner, who spoke at a Freedom House panel discussion about the report January 13, said the Obama administration is “increasingly in a range of discussions with other governments making clear the link between how they perform, how they act on human rights and democracy, and their ability to work with us as a close ally or a partner.”

Freedom House gave its lowest possible ratings for both political rights and civil liberties to Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Tibet, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. But China, Egypt, Iran, Russia and Venezuela are cited for having stepped up repressive measures with great brazenness, according to the report.

Among the most notorious incidents of 2010, according to the report, was China’s effort to persuade the Nobel Prize committee to reject jailed democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo as an award recipient. When it failed to do that, Freedom House said, China then pressured foreign governments to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony and threatened economic retaliation against Norway, where the awards were presented.

Egypt conducted elections with little hint of transparency, the report says. Iran arrested hundreds of political activists protesting the 2009 elections, regarded by many as “stolen.” Russia showed blatant disregard for judicial independence in its sentencing of regime critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky. And, Venezuela pushed through legislation allowing President Hugo Chávez to rule by decree, constrain nongovernmental organizations and extend media restrictions to the Internet, the report says.

Among other trends cited by Freedom House is the role of organized crime. Mexico, for example, was downgraded by Freedom House from “free” to “partly free” because of the Mexican government’s inability to stem the tide of violence by drug-trafficking groups.

Most Muslim-majority countries — with the notable exception of Indonesia — have failed to make progress in embracing civil rights for their citizens, the report says. And the failure to deal humanely with mass immigration, according to Freedom House, has tarnished the civil liberties score for France and other nations around the world.

On the bright side, Freedom House found improvements for Kenya, Moldova, Nigeria, the Philippines and Tanzania. And comparatively free and fair elections in Kyrgyzstan and Guinea helped pull those countries’ rankings up from “not free” to “partly free.”

More information on the report is available on the Freedom House website.