January 24, 2008
Freedom Falters Worldwide
If 2007 seemed like a bad year for democracy, that's because it was, according to new data from Freedom House, a U.S.-based organization that monitors and promotes freedom around the world. The group recently released its report on 2007, citing a "notable setback for global freedom" for the second consecutive year.
Freedom House uses its own set of criteria to divide nations into three categories: "free," "partly free" and "not free." In 2007, one-fifth of the world's nations experienced a decline in freedom, the group says. Although the number of countries in the "not free" category did not grow over the last year, "there were many changes within these broad categories" that demonstrate an alarming trend, a press release announcing the report claims. These reversals were seen in countries across the globe -- from sub-Saharan Africa to the former Soviet Union.
Nearly four times as many countries saw declines in levels of freedom as showed improvement. Dishearteningly, several countries that had been experiencing progress toward democracy in recent years, such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Kenya, took steps backward in 2007. Two former Soviet countries that underwent "color revolutions" fairly recently -- Kyrgyzstan and Georgia -- also reversed track last year, Freedom House reports.
The report's authors also observed a pattern of crackdowns on civil liberties in countries that were already considered "not free," such as Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution and imposed martial law in November. Venezuela, Iran and China were also noted as evidence of this trend.
Among the world's least open societies, the "worst of the worst" -- Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- not one showed signs of increasing liberty.
North America and countries in Western Europe maintained the highest ratings on Freedom House’s scale. However, the group writes that "the flawed response to an upsurge in immigration" in the U.S. and several European nations "has revealed potentially serious imperfections in these countries' democratic systems." The group is slated to release a special report on U.S. civil liberties in the spring.
The Christian Science Monitor has more on the report, and the Economist examines Freedom House's ties to the U.S. government, as well as its criteria for categorizing countries. In another report, the magazine contends that recent setbacks in worldwide freedom will likely prove temporary.
See Freedom House's Web site for selected data [PDF] from the report and an analysis [PDF] by Arch Puddington, the organization's vice president for research.
Posted at 2:16 PM
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Africa, Asia, China, Europe, Iran, Kenya, Middle East, Pakistan
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