The Winds of Freedom

More people are living in freedom than ever before and more of the world’s nations now qualify as electoral democracies, reports Freedom House in its annual survey of political rights and civil liberties. In 1996 the number of people living in free societies grew by 135 million, bringing to 1.25 billion those protected by basic rights. This is encouraging progress, certainly. What must not be lost sight of is that even today little more than one person out of five enjoys full freedom. Thirty-nine percent are ranked as only partly free, while a similar percentage live in societies where freedom is largely unknown.

The nonpartisan Freedom House was founded in 1941. Its annual survey measures the rights of individuals, including freedom of expression, equality under the law, protection from political terror and unjustified imprisonment, freedom for nongovernmental organizations and equality of opportunity. Based on these standards, 17 countries, comprising one-fourth of the world’s population, are held to be “the worst of the worst.” Among them: Afghanistan, Burma, China, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Vietnam.

Western Europe remains the world’s most democratic region, followed by the Americas, where only one state, Cuba, continues to deny its citizens fundamental freedoms.

Among the great gains for freedom in 1996, reports Freedom House, were the democratic presidential election in Taiwan, the triumph of electoral politics in Eastern and Central Europe and Nicaragua’s rejection of Sandinista presidential candidate Daniel Ortega. Among the greatest setbacks were the violence in Central Africa, the Taliban’s move to power in Afghanistan and China’s growing aggressiveness.

For all these disappointments, freedom continues to expand. “The greater the number of democracies and free societies,” says the Freedom House survey, “the more likely it is that democratic ideas will cross borders through expanded trade, commerce and the flow of information.” Consider freedom to be a benign infection, which sooner or later bodes to pierce the barriers erected by mankind’s oppressors.