Business Insider: The 27 countries in the world with the most freedom
Freedom means different things to different people.
But Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization that releases an annual report on freedom around the world, measures it in terms of civil liberties and political rights.
Their annual report, Freedom in the World, "operates from the assumption that freedom for all people is best achieved in liberal democratic societies."
In 2018, more than 130 in-house and external analysts and advisers from academia, think tanks, and human rights institutions created the report by collecting data from media, research articles, government documents, and other sources.
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WNU editor: Freedom House's annual report is here .... Freedom in the World 2018.
I'm in Vietnam now... I think "partly free" would be a fairer assessment here and for most countries in the "not free" list. Not sure what readers here think of Vietnam but it's more free and feels more free than eg mainland China.
ReplyDelete"Not free" is also such an absolute statement that I don't think applies to any country... except perhaps North Korea.
There's many things you can do in "not free" countries. It's often not as draconian as it sounds, which really renders the classification they use almost useless. It's like comparing apples and oranges, but only knowing both are round.
Also whenever I hear "not free" I think of a police state with people randomly being locked in. That's not really happening here. You get locked in for crimes. And of course if you're a political opponent of severe importance the state deems dangerous to its agenda. But. ..I'd argue that tends to happen in more places we are willing to admit. Including in the US. The number of times it might happen is perhaps bigger here, I don't know, but if you consider that the US has an incredibly large prison population (by absolute number, percentage) and a terribly high number of average years served, I caution people to take this infographic at face value and just assume all the other places (those in purple) are terrible places. They are not. I've been living in many countries and I'd argue that eg social peace and social cohesion (how people treat each other) is much better in Vietnam than in the US. Just by judging violent crime numbers you'll see the US outnumbered Vietnam easily. While violent crime doesn't have necessarily to do with freedom, at least on the surface, it makes you feel more free if you know you can walk late at night in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh city and will not be robbed or shot with the same likelihood as in the US. So in sum I think the West should not always rely on such simplified graphics and scoring systems that are not aligned with reality but rather to make certain countries (democratic countries) look better by overstating the value of democracy. Especially if democracy is currently horribly embarrassing itself we should be rather self critical and improve our own systems so we can increase democratic efficiency,participation and transparency. Currently, looking at the Kavanaugh debacle, it felt like what you'd expect in a deep purple country. An attempt to jail a political opponent and not the first time judging by what's going on in the fbi and doj
I agree Anon. This chart is more of a "Who is kind of friendly/aligned to the west" chart. Not that those two things are necessarily exclusive.
ReplyDeleteWhenever you have states like Britain and Germany who do not value free speech very highly on the "Free" part of the list, it will always be a bit of a sham.
Of course if one compares that to the DPRK, it is nothing. Nonetheless, no state is without sin when it comes to political oppression. It is unfortunately only natural