Transcript
JAKE DIZARD: To provide some general context, one key thing to bear in mind is that “Freedom in the World” has identified, for four straight years running, more deterioration than advancement in freedom in the world. And, in fact, in the most recent edition it was described as a freedom recession. Worryingly, the countries at the crossroads subset of countries also indicates greater backsliding than progress among the 21 countries for which we have previous data.
The largest and broadest declines were in media freedom and civic engagement, both of which are intensely important for citizens who want to hold their governments accountable. Both areas were affected not just by crude repression, although that certainly occurred in a number of contexts, but also by the arbitrary application of laws as well as the expansion of abuse to new forms of activism including online activity and social media. We’d also want to note that there was regression in the categories that assessed due process rights and the protection of property rights.
The news certainly wasn’t all grim. We included in this survey a number of countries that are considered relatively strong performers, including places like Ghana, Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia, all of which certainly face challenges, but are generally characterized by steady, if incremental, gains. There was also progress registered on some areas of anti-corruption policy. And one very important thing that we identified in this edition was progress in a number of states that showed promising signs that are either post-conflict or highly fragile states that have benefitted from United Nations presence, that includes Sierra Leone, Liberia, East Timor, and, at least prior to the earthquake, Haiti.
Finally, one other thing I wanted to mention is that we actually seemed to see a widening of the gap between law and implementation in this year. A number of countries have increasingly sophisticated legal frameworks, but in attempts to take what’s on the books and apply it in practice, there have been a number of problems. Sometimes when governments are well meaning, this, of course, is related to capacity and resource constraints, but we’ve also seen a number of cases where it’s related to a lack of political will among the elite -- among political elites in these countries.
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