The International Day of Political Prisoners originated in the Soviet Union in 1974, when political prisoners collectively held a one-day hunger strike. Soviet prisoners of conscience repeated this ...

The ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 representing the highest level of democratic progress and 1 the lowest. The Democracy Score is an average of ratings for the categories tracked in a ...

The Turkish state’s current campaign of transnational repression is remarkable for its intensity, its geographic reach, and the suddenness with which it escalated. The Turkish state’s current campaign ...

After experiencing a gradual decline in respect for political rights and civil liberties over the past decade, the United States is now facing an acute crisis for democracy. The events of the past ...

Of all the Arab states that experienced popular uprisings and political upheaval in 2011, Tunisia alone navigated the crisis through civil debate, free elections, and constructive negotiations. But ...

“The values of Buddhist ideals and the China Dream agree and understand [each other].… Together they achieve the ideological foundation of the struggle and the dream of the great rejuvenation of the ...

“After 2009, everything changed. Now the rule is, if I go to your house, read some Quran, pray together, and the government finds out, you go to jail.” —Barna, Uighur woman from Xinjiang now living in ...

In 2023, Democracy Scores declined in 11 out of the 29 countries in the report, and 7 countries earned improvements. Yet civic activists and democratic leaders continued to strive for better ...

In the year following the inauguration of Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo—a watershed moment for the country’s democracy—Freedom House proudly joined an international delegation to conduct a ...