The International Human Rights Organization Freedom House published an annual report assessing the state of political rights and civil liberties in 195 countries. In «Freedom in the World 2018: Democracy in Crisis» report, Kyrgyzstan scored 37 points and was included in the category of «partly free» countries.
The state of freedom is estimated using a scale (from 0 to 100 points), where 100 points is the highest freedom rate, and 0 points — the lowest.
The authors of the report concluded that during the last 12 years the level of freedom in the world has been steadily declining: 71 states have demonstrated a deterioration in the sphere of political rights and civil liberties with only 35 registering gains.
Kyrgyzstan, like in the last year, became the only country in Central Asia that was called «partly free.» Tajikistan (11 points), Kazakhstan (22 points), Uzbekistan (7 points) and Turkmenistan (4 points) were recognized not free countries.
As it is noted in the report, governments in some parts of the Eurasian region «sought to stave off change». In Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, heavily flawed voting highlighted the continuing erosion of democratic norms surrounding elections. The dominant parties in both countries relied on harassment of the opposition, voter intimidation, and misuse of administrative resources to maintain a grip on power.
Finland, Norway and Sweden, scoring 100 points, became free countries. Canada got 99 points, Australia, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Uruguay — 98 points each.
Syria, South Sudan, Eritrea, North Korea, Turkmenistan and Equatorial Guinea demonstrated the worst scores as not free countries.
