The human rights organization Freedom House documented the smallest decline in the number of countries becoming more authoritarian in 17 years in its 2023 report, a sign to be “optimistic” that a “turning point” has arrived in global liberty, report co-author Yana Gorokhovskaia told Breitbart News.
Gorokhovskaia, Freedom House’s research director for strategy and design, co-wrote the 2023 Freedom in the World report, released last week and taking into account the events and status of nations in 2022. Freedom House has published the document – which scores countries on a variety of metrics to gauge political and economic liberties – for the past 50 years. The report labels countries Free, Partly Free, or Not Free, based on their scores. The report includes disputed territories such as occupied Tibet, which received the world’s lowest score alongside Syria, Western Sahara, Gaza, and the Ukrainian Donbass region.
The 2022 report found a global decline in freedom, the 17th consecutive year it has done so. Among the biggest factors for the decline were the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine and multiple coups of varying success nationwide.
Gorokhovskaia told Breitbart News on Thursday, however, that the organization found fewer countries dropping in scores than it had in the last 17 years – nearly half as many countries saw their scores drop in 2022 than 2020. While the removal of remaining civil rights restrictions on the public in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic was partially to credit for increased scores, Gorokhovskaia suggested the one-time effects of these repeals were not significant enough to skew the trend.
“Some countries did register modest improvements related to the rolling back of disproportionate restrictions on freedoms of assembly and freedom of movement, which had originally followed the onset of the pandemic,” Gorokhovskaia explained. “However, the scale of improvements was relatively small.”
“We are optimistic about a possible turning point in global freedom because the number of countries declining is the smallest that it has been in the last 17 years – at just 35 (compared to 60 in 2021 and 73 in 2020),” she noted. “Improvements in country scores are important, but the significant slowdown in deterioration is the eye-catching finding.”
Only two countries received scores low enough to be downgraded out of their categories: Peru moved from Free to Partly Free and Burkina Faso moved from Partly Free to Not Free. In Peru, communist former President Pedro Castillo attempted to stage a “self-coup” by dissolving Congress before it could impeach him, landing him in prison and plunging the country into a political crisis. In Burkina Faso, pro-Russia soldiers staged a coup in October, ousting Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had become president in a coup in January.
Gorokhovskaia identified “increased political pluralism” and the holding of multiple free and fair elections around the world as playing a major role in the advancement of global freedom last year. Political pluralism often represents in the form of the establishment of political parties with varied ideological views, exercising political rights freely.
“New political parties have also been able to form in recent years, and there was increased competitiveness in the 2022 election,” she explained, “improved elections, particularly through increased competition, drove many of the year’s major improvements, including in Colombia, Lesotho, and Kenya.”
Of particular note were increased scores for Colombia and Kenya, where Marxist ex-guerrilla member Gustavo Petro and populist anti-China candidate William Ruto won their respective presidential elections last year.
Petro is the first leftist president in the modern history of Colombia; his runoff opponent, eccentric elderly businessman Rodolfo Hernández, conceded without incident despite multiple reports of irregularity. In Kenya, the opposite happened: Ruto’s opponent, Raila Odinga, refused to concede, but no significant evidence surfaced to question the results of the election and Ruto became president with minimal incident. Gorokhovskaia applauded Colombia’s presidential election for being “highly competitive” and Kenya’s for being, according to many election integrity experts, its “most transparent ever.”
Not all score improvements necessarily represent major changes in the daily lives of a country’s residents, however. Gorokhovskaia described the situation in some countries with improved scores as remaining “bleak,” with so much room for improvement that small changes could affect scores.
“In Saudi Arabia, for example, some legal barriers that had prevented women from entering the workforce and obtaining employment in certain sectors of the economy were removed in recent years,” she explained. “Yet women still face extensive legal and societal discrimination, and Saudi Arabia has one of the worst aggregate scores of all 210 countries and territories that we assess.”
“Similarly,” she continued, “Libya experienced a minor improvement as some unions were able to conduct regular meetings and advocate for their interests in recent years. But the overall score remains extremely low given internal divisions and intermittent civil conflict over the last decade. In fact, Libya has experienced the largest 10-year score decline.”
Libya has not had a single functional government since 2011, when the authoritarian regime of dictator Muammar Qaddafi collapsed. It is currently split between the Government of National Accord – the national government recognized by the United Nations – a rival government in the national capital of Tripoli, and a variety of regional militias and terror groups. Attempts to hold presidential elections in 2021, which attracted dozens of candidates, failed.
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