Courageous rights defenders are jailed all over the world for speaking truth to power. Freedom House documents their cases ...

Guatemala: International organizations demand freedom for Jose Rubén Zamora and urgent guarantees of due process ...

A growing number of leaders in Central and Eastern Europe have dropped even the pretense of playing by the rules of democracy. As the democratic consensus of the post–Cold War order has given way to ...

Governments are increasingly purchasing sophisticated technology to monitor their citizens’ behavior on social media. Once the preserve of the world’s foremost intelligence agencies, this form of mass ...

Media freedom has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade. In some of the most influential democracies in the world, populist leaders have overseen concerted attempts to throttle the ...

Protecting and Promoting Internet Freedom For Policymakers Protect privacy and security Strictly regulate the use of surveillance tools and personal-data collection by government and law enforcement ...

The following countries—and one territory—featured important developments in 2020 that affected their democratic trajectory, and deserve special scrutiny in 2021. The road to an open democratic ...

Freedom in the World is an annual global report on political rights and civil liberties, composed of numerical ratings and descriptive texts for each country and a select group of territories. The ...

Conditions in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine were assessed in a single report for the first time in the 2025 edition of Freedom in the World. While previous editions assessed Crimea and ...

For over 50 years, Freedom in the World has been widely used by policymakers, researchers, students, international organizations, and investors. Donate today to help us ensure the future of this vital ...

Governments are using the pandemic as a pretext to crack down on free expression and access to information. Information can be the difference between life and death. The coronavirus pandemic has ...