The US based rights watchdog Freedom House published their annual report for the year, Freedom in the World 2019, ranked Tibet in the worst on the index. The Freedom House report gave a score of just 1 out of 100 points for aggregate score of Freedom while Syria was given 0 out of 100 points for aggregate score of Freedom!
Freedom in the World 2019, is a country-by-country report on global political rights and civil liberties in 195 countries and 14 territories covering the developments that took place in 2018. Any country or territory is given a status “free”, “partly free” or “not free” based on points in political rights and civil liberties categories on a scale from 1 to 7 with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free. Of the 195 countries assessed in 2019 report, 86 (44%) were rated “free”, 59 (30%) “partly free”, and 50 (26%) “not free”.
While Syria and Tibet ranked worst in the matters of Political Rights as well as civil liberties with the given scale of 7 in both the cases, countries such as South Sudan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Somalia scored similar scale of 7 in terms of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, their aggregate scores fared better than Tibet with their Freedom scores in 2018 are 2, 3, 7, 7 and 7 respectively.
The big picture of the freedom index according to Axios, the Political rights and civil liberties became weaker in 68 countries since last year’s report, and improved in only 50 countries. There is a shifting global balance of power in favour of countries like China, and “anger and anxiety in Europe and the United States over economic inequality and the loss of personal status” as underlying causes of the strains we’re seeing on democratic institutions.
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