Freedom House: Prospects for world freedom in 2009

Freedom retreated in much of the world in 2008, the third year of global decline as measured by Freedom House’s annual survey of political rights and civil liberties. Sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union saw the most reversals, while South Asia showed significant improvement.

Freedom in the World 2009 examines the state of freedom in all 193 countries and 16 strategic territories. The survey analyzes developments that occurred in 2008 and assigns each country a freedom status — either Free, Partly Free or Not Free based on a scoring of performance in key freedoms.

Although setbacks in 2008 did not represent substantial declines for most countries, setbacks were numerous and affected most regions. Overall, 34 countries registered declines in freedom, including Italy and Greece in Western Europe, and 14 registered improvements.

The number of countries judged by Freedom in the World as Free in 2008 stands at 89, representing 46 percent of the world’s countries and 46 percent of the global population. The number of Partly Free countries is 62, or 32 percent of all countries assessed by the survey and 20 percent of the world’s total population. The report designates 42 countries as Not Free, representing 22 percent of the total number of countries and 34 percent of the world population. Nearly 60 percent of this number lives in China. The number of Not Free countries declined by one.

Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe remains strong, despite setbacks in Bulgaria and Macedonia, where inability of the state to deal with the rampant corruption and poorly organized elections were noted, respectively.

Of the countries of the Western Balkans, Croatia (average grade 2) and Serbia (2.5) were rated free, while Albania (3), Macedonia (3), BiH (3.5) and Montenegro (3) were rated partly free, while Kosovo, with average grade of 5.5 was ranked among the not free countries. (The average grade is composite of grades for political rights and civil liberties, where 1 denotes most free, and 7 the least free rating).

Also, Bosnia and Herzegovina was included, for the first time, in the ranks of electoral democracies.

Freedom House, an independent nongovernmental organization that supports expansion of freedom in the world, has been monitoring political rights and civil liberties worldwide since 1972.

For detailed results, maps, graphs and tables, visit the Freedom in the World 2009 website