Is freedom melting like snow in the sun? Maybe. In any case, 2023 is like the previous eighteen years: freedom in the world has once again become emaciated. This is what a study published this Thursday, February 29 by the American organization reveals Freedom House. In total, 52 countries have been hit by a decline in civil liberties and political rights. Conversely, only 21 experienced improvement.
“The scope and scale of the deterioration have been considerable,” warn Yana Gorokhovskaia and Cathryn Grothe, co-editors of the report. Because in 2023, no less than a fifth of the world’s population would have seen their scope of rights and freedoms reduced.
Political manipulations, coups d’état…
According to the study, political manipulation and rigging are one of the main causes of the general erosion of freedoms. In 26 countries around the world, the power in place has, for example, tried to prevent the opposition from fighting on equal terms. Among the states affected by this democratic asphyxiation are Cambodia, Guatemala, Poland, Turkey, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, and even Venezuela.
Without forgetting Ecuador, where several civil servants and politicians have been assassinated. As recently as last August, Fernando Villavicencio, the centrist presidential candidate placed second in the polls, was shot and killed at the end of a meeting in Quito. It is therefore no surprise that the “Little Switzerland” of Latin America has been demoted from the status of a “free” country to that of “partially free”. Unlike Thailand, which after holding democratic national elections left the ranks of “unfree” countries to rise to the rank of “partially free” countries.
Of the 67 countries and territories designated as not free, the next 15 countries have the worst overall records on political rights and civil liberties. Some of them have remained at the bottom of the rankings since at least 2005, while others have experienced more recent declines that have brought them to their current position.
© / Freedom House
At least as serious as prevented elections or rigged ballots: coups d’état. Mostly military, and most often in African countries. In Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan, but also in Southeast Asia in Burma. All have considerably destabilized institutions, and have been followed by violent repression of the population.
Multiplication of wars
On average more devastating than coups d’état: armed conflicts, which plunge countries into chaos, and populations into material and physical insecurity. If we first think of the Russo-Ukrainian and Israeli-Palestinian wars, the Azeri offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh is the armed attack that caused the greatest decline in freedoms in 2023 (minus 40 points). Almost its entire population – some 120,000 Armenians – was forced to flee the enclave under intense pressure from the Azeri army.
The fact remains that, “like Azerbaijan, Moscow’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine had a serious impact on the little freedom that previously existed in Russia”, underlines Yana Gorokhovskaia. And added: “Since 2022, the Kremlin has continued a vigorous effort to eradicate anti-war dissent, silence critical media coverage and militarize Russian society” which has lost no less than 13 points of freedom over the course of the last decade. LGBT+ rights in particular are mistreated in the country of the tsars. “In 2023, the rights of LGBT+ people who were already marginalized […] were again attacked and thousands of people were subject to administrative charges and denunciations for having criticized Kremlin policy or the war in Ukraine,” add the two analysts.
Unsurprisingly, the Gaza Strip’s score, already among the lowest in the world before the attack on October 7, 2023, declined further in 2023. Israel’s counter-offensive against Hamas “impeded the provision of humanitarian aid and the work of local and international non-governmental organizations, […] and caused the destruction of businesses, hospitals and approximately 70% of all housing”, recalls the study. In addition, with the degradation of more than 300 schools and universities, the space until then reserved for academic freedom was considerably reduced.
An insidious suppression of freedoms
China is also among the countries where the decline in freedom has been the greatest over ten years globally. Because “even without the large-scale violence of war, the suppression of political rights is often accompanied by a serious degradation of other freedoms,” emphasize Yana Gorokhovskaia and Cathryn Grothe.
And to mention the national security law promulgated in 2020 in the territory of Hong Kong. Through this text, the Chinese Communist Party effectively restricted participation in elections in favor of pro-Beijing candidates, banning opposition parties. The CCP pursues a policy of “aggressive repression of dissident parties”, whose activists are imprisoned for their fight for the establishment of real democracy. This is why China is classified as an “unfree” country.