Epress.am News from Armenia
Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey.
A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world.
Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators.
The world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes acted with increased brazenness in 2010. China pressured foreign governments to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony honoring jailed democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez pushed through legislation that allowed him to rule by decree and further restricted nongovernmental organizations and the media. Russia’s leadership showed blatant disregard for judicial independence in its handling of, among other cases, the sentencing of regime critic and former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky after a trial that was widely considered fraudulent. And both Egypt and Belarus conducted sham elections with little hint of transparency. In the case of Belarus, the election was followed by massive violence by security forces against peaceful demonstrators.
The number of countries designated by Freedom in the World as Free in 2010 stands at 87, two fewer than the previous year, and representing 45 percent of the world’s 194 countries and 43 percent of the world’s population.
The number of Partly Free countries increased to 60, or 31 percent of all countries assessed by the survey, comprising 22 percent of the world’s total population.
The number of countries deemed to be Not Free remained at 47, or 24 percent of the total number of countries. Nearly 2.5 billion people live in societies where fundamental political rights and civil liberties are not respected. China accounts for more than half of this number.
In Central and Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union region one can observe some changes. The 2010 election in Kyrgyzstan, which followed the collapse of the government earlier in the year, was considered relatively free and fair and resulted in a status improvement from Not Free to Partly Free. Gains were also noted in Georgia and Moldova. Ukraine dropped from Free to Partly Free, and Nagorno-Karabakh fell from Partly Free to Not Free. Armenia as in the last year’s survey is among Partly Free states.