Meaning of a Global Perspective

Global freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year.  Moscow’s war of aggression led to devastating human rights atrocities in Ukraine. New coups and other attempts to undermine representative government destabilized Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Peru, and Brazil. Previous years’ coups and ongoing repression continued to diminish basic liberties in Guinea and constrain those in Turkey, Myanmar, and Thailand, among others. Two countries suffered downgrades in their overall freedom status: Peru moved from Free to Partly Free, and Burkina Faso moved from Partly Free to Not Free.

The struggle for democracy may be approaching a turning point. The gap between the number of countries that registered overall improvements in political rights and civil liberties and those that registered overall declines for 2022 was the narrowest it has ever been through 17 years of global deterioration. Thirty-four countries made improvements, and the tally of countries with declines, at 35, was the smallest recorded since the negative pattern began. The gains were driven by more competitive elections as well as a rollback of pandemic-related restrictions that had disproportionately affected freedom of assembly and freedom of movement. Two countries, Colombia and Lesotho, earned upgrades in their overall freedom status, moving from Partly Free to Free.

While authoritarians remain extremely dangerous, they are not unbeatable. The year’s events showed that autocrats are far from infallible, and their errors provide openings for democratic forces. The effects of corruption and a focus on political control at the expense of competence exposed the limits of the authoritarian models offered by Beijing, Moscow, Caracas, or Tehran. Meanwhile, democratic alliances demonstrated solidarity and vigour.

Infringement on freedom of expression has long been a key driver of global democratic decline. Over the last 17 years, the number of countries and territories that receive a score of 0 out of 4 on the report’s media freedom indicator has ballooned from 14 to 33, as journalists face persistent attacks from autocrats and their supporters while receiving inadequate protection from intimidation and violence even in some democracies. The past year brought more of the same, with media freedom coming under pressure in at least 157 countries and territories during 2022. Scores for a related indicator pertaining to freedom of personal expression have also declined over the years amid greater invasions of privacy, harassment and intimidation, and incentives to self-censor both online and offline.

The fight for freedom persists across decades. When Freedom House issued the first edition of its global survey in 1973, 44 of 148 countries were rated Free. Today, 84 of 195 countries are Free. Over the past 50 years, consolidated democracies have not only emerged from deeply repressive environments but also proven to be remarkably resilient in the face of new challenges. Although democratization has slowed and encountered setbacks, ordinary people around the world, including in Iran, China, and Cuba, continue to defend their rights against authoritarian encroachment.

“In this briefing paper, ARTICLE 19 outlines the importance of protecting women’s freedom of expression when tackling online harassment and abuse, setting out applicable international human rights standards, and how governments must act on this issue in a freedom of expression compliant way. ARTICLE 19 hopes that this briefing paper will offer clear answers to the question of how to strike the right balance between the protection of the right to freedom of expression and the protection of women’s rights as well as robust measures that States must adopt to promote and protect both rights.”

“This report, prepared by the research staff of the Law Library of Congress, surveys legal acts regulating mass media and their ability to distribute information freely during the Covid-19 pandemic. The report focuses on recently introduced amendments to national legislation aimed at establishing different control measures over the media outlets, internet resources, and journalists in 20 selected countries around the world where adoption of such laws has been identified, namely: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, El Salvador, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Moldova, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.”   

Director of the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Expression at the Universidad de Los Andes, Co-Chair of Meta’s Oversight Board, and Former Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of the IACHR, Catalina Botero-Marino contributed this chapter to the volume on The Impact of the Inter-American Human Rights System: Transformations on the Ground (New York, 2024). The chapter lays out how the current freedom of expression standards – including those on speech about the issues of public interest and prohibitions of prior and indirect censorship, among others – came to be established within the Inter-American Human Rights System. The chapter then focuses on the transformative influence that two of those standards have had on domestic legal systems: “the standard regarding the limits of criminal law and the standard regarding the scope and nature of the right to access public information.”

“Alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, the governmental restrictions related to it were a stress test for multiple areas related to human rights, including the freedom of speech and media plurality. Specifically, concerns have been raised over the respect of the freedom of expression, both for individuals and the media, in several Eastern Partnership countries. This analysis focuses on identifying positive and negative changes with regards to freedom of speech and media resulting from policies related to COVID-19, examining the role of media in providing reliable information about COVID-19, evaluating the role of digitalisation on independent media, and assessing the impact of the strengthened strategic communication and support for media in the implementation of the 20 Deliverables for 2020.”

“Freedom on the Net is an annual study of human rights in the digital sphere. The project assesses internet freedom in 70 countries, accounting for 88 percent of the world’s internet users. This report, the 11th in its series, covered developments between June 2020 and May 2021.” Its key findings are: “1) Global internet freedom declined for the 11th consecutive year; 2) Governments clashed with technology companies on users’ rights; 3) Free expression online is under unprecedented strain; 4) China ranks as the worst environment for internet freedom for the seventh year in a row; 5) The United States’ score declined for the fifth consecutive year; and, 6) State intervention must protect human rights online and preserve an open internet…[The uploaded report] is a summary of findings for the 2021 edition of Freedom on the Net. Narrative reports on the 70 countries assessed in this study can be found on our website at freedomonthenet.org.” 

For the thirteenth year in a row, there has been a drop in internet freedom worldwide, with digital repression causing the largest decline in Iran. Myanmar was found to have the worst internet freedom conditions in the world, while President Rodrigo Duterte's use of an antiterrorism statute to restrict news sites critical of his administration made matters worse in the Philippines. After a presidential candidate whose campaign manager employed internet trolls to intimidate media outlets was elected, Costa Rica's reputation as a champion of internet freedom came under danger. Attacks on the right to free speech have become more widespread; out of the 70 nations that Freedom on the Net covers, 55 have reported facing legal consequences for online speech, and 41 have executed or killed individuals for their comments posted online.

With 47 governments using commenters to sway online debates, generative artificial intelligence (AI) poses a serious challenge to online disinformation tactics. Disinformation strategies have intensified as a result of the increased sophistication, accessibility, and ease of use of AI-based technologies. Governments have also improved and honed their online censorship strategies; in 22 countries, laws have been passed requiring or rewarding digital companies to use machine learning to filter out objectionable social, political, and religious content.

The defenders of democracy must apply the lessons they have learnt from previous internet governance issues to AI to preserve online freedom. AI has the potential to be a powerful tool for digital repression, increasing the efficiency, speed, cost-effectiveness, and ease of censorship, surveillance, and the production and dissemination of false information.

The Global Expression Report 2023 provides a comprehensive analysis of the state of freedom of expression worldwide. It assesses 161 countries using 25 indicators to assign each a score between 0 and 100, categorizing them into various levels of expression freedom: In Crisis (0-19), Highly Restricted (20-39), Restricted (40-59), Less Restricted (60-79), and Open (80-100).

Key findings include:

1. **Decline in Global Expression**: There has been a significant decline in freedom of expression globally. The Global Expression Score, the mean average of country scores, has dropped by 6 points since 2012. Even more concerning is the Human Score, weighted by population, which shows a 13-point decline over the same period.

2. **Widespread Repression**: Around 80% of the global population now lives with less freedom of expression than a decade ago, affecting over 6 billion people in more than 80 countries. The 21st century has seen an increase in repression for the majority of the world's population.

3. **Disproportionate Impact**: The report highlights that more countries are experiencing declines in freedom than those witnessing improvements. Notably, countries with declining freedoms tend to have larger populations. For instance, 95% of countries that have seen advances in the last decade have populations under 50 million, whereas only 74% of countries with declining freedoms have populations of that size.

Overall, the report paints a concerning picture of the current state and trends of global freedom of expression.

"The dynamics by which norms emerge and spread in international society have been the subject of strikingly little study. This article focuses on norms that prohibit, both in international law and in the domestic criminal laws of states, the involvement of state and nonstate actors in activities such as piracy, slavery, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, the hijacking of aircraft, and the killing of endangered animal species. It analyzes the manner in which these norms have evolved into and been institutionalized by global prohibition regimes and argues that there are two principal inducements to the formation and promotion of such regimes. The first is the inadequacy of unilateral and bilateral law enforcement measures in the face of criminal activities that transcend national borders. The second is the role of moral and emotional factors related to neither political nor economic advantage but instead involving religious beliefs, humanitarian sentiments, fears, prejudices, paternalism, faith in universalism, the individual conscience, and the compulsion to proselytize. The ultimate success or failure of an international regime in effectively suppressing a particular activity depends, however, not only on the degree of commitment to its norms or the extent of resources devoted to carrying out its goals but also on the vulnerability of the activity to its enforcement measures."

"With [a] global mandate to protect 'the free flow of ideas by word and image', UNESCO acts worldwide to advance fundamental freedoms, and to ensure that obligations are fulfilled and rights are exercised. [UNESCO works] to increase the knowledge and capacities of judiciary members on international and regional standards on freedom of expression and the safety of journalists. As a result, since 2013, more than 18,000 judicial operators and civil society representatives in Latin America, Africa and the Arab region have been trained on these issues. This toolkit on international standards for freedom of expression builds on these efforts, aiming to give a global scope to this endeavour. By reinforcing the knowledge and capacities of the judiciary, the toolkit effectively contributes to the implementation of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, adopted by the UN Chief Executives Board in 2012 and recognised by the UN General Assembly in 2013. The Plan of Action aims to create "a free and safe environment for journalists and media workers in both conflict and non-conflict situations, with a view to strengthening peace, democracy and development worldwide". [It is hoped] that this toolkit will be a useful tool for judges, public prosecutors, judicial training institutes, academics and judicial actors at large, so that respect for freedom of expression, public access to information, and the safety of journalists become an integral part of efforts to guarantee and promote human rights in our societies."