Estonia gets perfect score in freedom survey

  • 2010-02-10
  • By Ella Karapetyan

TALLINN - The New York-based Freedom House once again has included Estonia in its latest annual review of political rights and civil liberties in its ‘Freedom in the World 2010’ survey. Estonia received a score of 1 for its political rights, the same as its result for civil liberties.

Freedom House rated countries from one to seven points in these two categories, with countries seen as offering the greatest freedoms to their residents receiving the highest score - one point.
Estonia scored one point in both categories just like most other European Union member states. Latvia, however, received a score of 2 for political rights and 1 for civil liberties. Lithuania’s scores were 1 and 1. Russia’s political rights score was 6, and for civil liberties the score was 5, putting it in the ‘Not Free’ category.

The number of countries designated by the ‘Freedom in the World’ survey as ‘Free’ in 2009 stands at 89, representing 46 percent of the world’s 194 countries, and 46 percent of the global population. The number of ‘Partly Free’ countries declined to 58, or 30 percent of all countries assessed by the survey, comprising 20 percent of the world’s total population.
The number of countries deemed to be ‘Not Free’ increased to 47. Over 2.3 billion people live in societies where fundamental political rights and civil liberties are not respected. China accounts for half of this number.

Freedom House said that for the fourth consecutive year, global declines in freedom outweighed gains in 2009. This represents the longest continuous period of decline for global freedom since 1972, when the report started to be compiled. “The news for 2009 is cause for real concern,” said Arch Puddington, Freedom House Director of Research.
In this year’s findings, five countries moved into the ‘Not Free’ status, and the number of electoral democracies declined to the lowest level since 1995.

The countries moving into the ‘Not Free’ status were Bahrain, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Yemen. Sixteen countries made notable gains, with two countries improving their overall freedom status. The most significant improvements in 2009 occurred in Asia.