List of indices of freedom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are several non-governmental organizations that publish and maintain assessments of the state of freedom in the world and rank countries as being free, partly free, or unfree using various measures of freedom, including political rights, economic rights, and civil liberties.

• Freedom in the World published by Freedom House ranks countries by political rights and civil liberties that are derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Countries are assessed as free, partly free, or unfree.
• The Index of Economic Freedom is an annual report published by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation. Countries are assessed as free, mostly free, mostly unfree, and unfree.
• Worldwide Press Freedom Index is published by Reporters Without Borders. Countries are assessed as having a good situation, a satisfactory situation, noticeable problems, a difficult situation, or a very serious situation.
• The Economic Freedom of the World Index is a report published by the Fraser Institute. It is a numeric index and its results are not (yet) included in the table below.

[edit] Current assessments

A map of the Freedom House data.
Red is unfree
Yellow is partly free
Blue is free
Grey means data unvailable

Here is a table of the assessments in each index for most countries of the world. For exact rankings rather than assessments, refer to the individual index articles.

According to the rankings of the table above, the most free (the "all-blue") countries are (in alphabetical order):

• Austria
• Canada
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• Germany
• Iceland
• Republic of Ireland
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom

And the least free (the "all-red") are:

• Cuba
• Iran
• Laos
• Libya
• Myanmar
• North Korea
• Turkmenistan
• Zimbabwe

[edit] See also

• Transparency (humanities)
• Media transparency
• Transparency (market)
• Areopagitica: A speech of Mr John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England

[edit] External links

• Freedom House's Freedom in the World
• The Wall Street Journal's Index of Economic Freedom
• The Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World
• www.medienhilfe.org Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH) - International organization for press freedom
• Reporters Without Borders' Worldwide Press Freedom Index