Freedom House
Categories: Political and economic think tanks | Human rights bodies
Freedom House is a partly government-funded American pressure group in the Wilsonian tradition, which advocates the global spread of democracy, and sees it as the historical task of the United States to further this goal. It is best known for its annual assessment of the degree of democratic freedoms in each country. The organisation was founded by Wendell Wilkie and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1941, describes itself as "a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world". It is a purely American organisation, with offices in New York City and Washington, DC, and it is non-partisan in the American sense, meaning it does not identify with either the Republican or the Democratic parties.
Freedom House says of itself that it "has vigorously opposed dictatorships in Central America and Chile, apartheid in South Africa, the suppression of the Prague Spring, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the brutal violation of human rights in Cuba, Burma, China, and Iraq. It has championed the rights of democratic activists, religious believers, trade unionists, journalists, and proponents of free markets.".
During the 1940s, Freedom House supported the Marshall Plan and the establishment of NATO. During the 1950s and 1960s, it supported the U.S. civil rights movement. During the 1980s, it supported the Solidarity movement in Poland and the democratic opposition in the Philippines.
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Organization
Freedom House is an exclusively American organisation: no foreign groups or individuals participate in its organisational structures. It is controlled by a Board of Trustees, which it describes as composed of 'prominent Americans'. The best-known member is Samuel P. Huntington, author of the Clash of Civilizations. His thesis, that western countries with western values form a geopolitical unit in conflict with other 'civilizations', is not official ideology at Freedom House, but accord with its belief in a global expansion of democracy. The Board also includes Steve Forbes, P. J. O'Rourke, and Mark Palmer.
Freedom House is funded by a number of foundations, including Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Soros Foundations. They also receive funding from the US Government through the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the State Department.
Freedom House is a member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, a global network of non-governmental organisations that monitors free expression violations worldwide and campaigns to defend journalists, writers, Internet users and others who are persecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Reports
Freedom House produces influential reports on the degree of democracy and freedom in countries around the world, and produces annual scores representing what it judges of countries' political and civil liberties, on a scale from 1 (best) to 7 (worst).
In their 2003 report, for example, Canada (judged as fully free and democratic) got a perfect score of a "1" in civil liberties and a "1" in political rights, earning them the designation of "free." The more oppressive nation of Nigeria got a "5" and a "4" earning them the designation of "Partly Free," while an out and out dictatorship like North Korea scored the lowest rank of "7-7", and was thus dubbed "not free."
Until 2003, countries whose combined average ratings for political rights and for civil liberties fell between 1.0 and 2.5 were designated "free"; between 3.0 and 5.5 "partly free", and between 5.5 and 7.0 "not free". Beginning with the ratings for 2003, countries whose combined average ratings fall between 3.0 and 5.0 are "partly free", and those between 5.5 and 7.0 are "not free."
Freedom House also produces annual reports on press freedom and governance in the nations of the former Soviet Union, freedom of women in the Middle East, and good governance in countries being considered for President George W. Bush's Millennium Challenge Account foreign aid program.
- Color Key:
- Green: Free
- Beige: Partly Free
- Red: Not Free
Nations in Freedom House's reports and website are usually grouped with historical and cultural criteria, rather than strictly geographical ones. For example:
- The nations of Middle East and North Africa are grouped together.
- The Cold war-era political definition of Western Europe is used, in which nations such as Turkey, Greece and Cyprus are all considered Western European nations.
- Eastern Europe encompasses all countries formerly part of the Soviet Union, including ones located in Asia, such as Tajikistan or Uzbekistan.
Critique
The annual surveys of Freedom House have often been criticised, although western media tend to take them at face value, and the criticism does not get wide publicity. Left-wing critics of Freedom House tend to accuse it of right-wing bias and of unfair ratings. Specific ratings that have been attacked include Cuba's rating of 7-7 as well as Cuba's inclusion in Freedom House's list of the world's most repressive regimes. United States' rating of 1-1, Panama's rating of 1-2 and El-Salvador's rating of 2-3 have also been criticized. Supporters respond that Freedom House is often critical of both the US (which received a "declining freedom" designation in 2004) and traditional US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. Critics point out, however, that Freedom House is extremely mild and timid in its criticism of the US, but heavy-handed in its criticism of states designated as enemies by the US government.
Impartiality and neutrality
The United States gets consistently good scores in the Freedom House surveys. However, that is perhaps not surprising, since the United States Government pays for the research. Generally accepted social science standards of impartiality and independence, would not permit research to be funded by the object of the research, or those who are in conflict with it. This problem is particularly acute in the case of North Korea, which is still formally at war with the country which funds the research.
There are related issues of cultural bias arising from the fact that the organisation is located in the United States, with largely American staff, and therefore has an unavoidably American perspective. In a 2004 paper,[1] Christina Holtz-Bacha complains that the Freedom House surveys of press freedom define that freedom in American terms:In the United States, public service broadcasting is often equated with state broadcasting. Most West European countries attach great importance to public service broadcasting which they consider a safeguard for diversity. Public service broadcasting is therefore supported through financial guarantees. From the US point of view, this is understood as public service broadcasting being dependent on the government while from a European perspective, support of public stations is regarded as lying in the interest of a free and diverse media system.
The most controversial bias issue is that of religion and particularly the Freedom House judgment on relevant values in Islam. Freedom House, for instance, measures human rights according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and not the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. [2]. The organisation does not claim to be neutral toward the Islamic world: one of its recent research reports was entitled "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques". The study[3] accused the Saudi Arabian monarchy of funding a campaign of hate directed against Christians, in favour of the Sharia, and promoting war against the United States. Some of this is undoubtedly true - the Saudi monarchy does apply the Sharia - but Freedom House also claims to be capable of a neutral assessment of freedom in Saudi Arabia.
Methodology favouring the West
The accuracy of the high scores for western democracies, in the Freedom House surveys, has been questioned. Within the United States, critics of American government and society dispute that the country is as free as Freedom House would claim. Similar issues apply in some other western countries, and they are related to problems with the methodology:
- Constitutional and treaty restrictions on civil liberties are excluded from the analysis. Many democracies qualify the right to freedom of speech with de facto exclusion of certain groups, views, or types of speech. In Germany, some civil liberties are conditional on support for the German Constitution, and faced with a growing problem of internal radical Islamism, European countries are considering excluding criticism of secular democracy from the freedom of expression.
- Freedom House excludes certain groups from its assessment of freedom. Most notably, the position of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is excluded from the assessment of the United States freedom ranking. The U.S. government claims that they are "illegal enemy combatants", and that their detention is justified. The detainees clearly lack political freedoms, but they are hated and despised by the majority of Americans, who think they have been rightfully imprisoned. Since all societies have similar restrictions on detained criminals, the existence of Guantanamo Bay or similar detention facilities, does not (in their view) detract from the status of the United States as a very free society.
- Certain specific policies which infringe civil liberties, such as the shoot-to-kill policy for suspected suicide bombers, appear to have been excluded from the analysis. Israel has operated such a policy for a number of years, and Britain introduced one in 2005.
- Freedom House excludes geopolitical choice from its assessment. Separatist minorities in free democracies are assumed to be 'free', even if secession is forbidden, and they consider themselves unfree as a group.
- Freedom House does not always include de facto dependent territories in its assessment. Israel is assessed twice, one for itself, once for its occupied territories, which are classified as 'unfree'. However, countries which participate in the occupation of Iraq are not assessed for the standards their troops apply there.
- Freedom House does not assess a government's behaviour outside the national borders, or the standards it applies there. Transfer of prisoners for third-party torture, for instance, would not affect a country's rating.
2005 Ratings
NOTE: The ratings in this table reflect global events from 1 December 2003 through 30 November 2004.
PR - Political Rights CL - Civil Liberties
Sub-Saharan Africa
Americas
Asia-Pacific
Central & Eastern Europe & the former Soviet Union
Western Europe
Middle East & North Africa
| Country | PR | CL | Status | Country | PR | CL | Status |
| Image:Flag of Algeria.svg Algeria | 6 | 5 | Not Free | Image:Flag of Libya.svg Libya | 7 | 7 | Not Free |
| Image:Flag of Bahrain.svg Bahrain | 5 | 5 | Partly Free | Image:Flag of Morocco.svg Morocco | 5 | 4 | Partly Free |
| Image:Egypt flag 300.png Egypt | 6 | 5 | Not Free | Image:Oman flag large.png Oman | 6 | 5 | Not Free |
| Image:Iran flag large.png Iran | 6 | 6 | Not Free | Image:Flag of Qatar.svg Qatar | 6 | 5 | Not Free |
| Image:Iraq flag large.png Iraq | 7 | 5 | Not Free | Image:Saudi arabia flag large.png Saudi Arabia | 7 | 7 | Not Free |
| Image:Flag of Israel.svg Israel | 1 | 3 | Free | Image:Flag of Syria.svg Syria | 7 | 7 | Not Free |
| Image:Flag of Jordan.svg Jordan | 5 | 4 | Partly Free | Image:Tunisia flag large.png Tunisia | 6 | 5 | Not Free |
| Image:Flag of Kuwait.svg Kuwait | 4 | 5 | Partly Free | Image:Uae flag large.png United Arab Emirates | 6 | 6 | Not Free |
| Image:Lebanon flag large.png Lebanon | 6 | 5 | Not Free | Image:Yemen flag large.png Yemen | 5 | 5 | Partly Free |
Related/Disputed Territories
| Country | PR | CL | Status | Country | PR | CL | Status |
| Abkhazia (Georgia) | 6 | 5 | Not Free | Kosovo (Serbia & Montenegro) | 6 | 5 | Not Free |
| Chechnya (Russia) | 7 | 7 | Not Free | Image:Macao flag large.png Macao (China) | 6 | 4 | Partly Free |
| Northern Cyprus | 2 | 2 | Free | Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan) | 5 | 5 | Partly Free |
| Image:Flag of Hong Kong SAR.png Hong Kong (China) | 5 | 2 | Partly Free | Puerto Rico (United States) | 1 | 2 | Free |
| West Bank and Gaza Israeli Administered | 6 | 6 | Not Free | Tibet (China) | 7 | 7 | Not Free |
| Palestinian Authority Administered Territories | 5 | 6 | Not Free | Transnistria (Moldova) | 6 | 6 | Not Free |
| Kashmir (Indian Administered) | 5 | 5 | Partly Free | Western Sahara (Morocco) | 7 | 6 | Not Free |
| Kashmir (Pakistani Administered) | 7 | 5 | Not Free | ||||
See also
External links
- Freedom House
- What is "good" press freedom? The difficulty of measuring freedom of the press worldwide, Christina Holtz-Bacha, 2004.