Freedom at Issue

The Arab Spring and Freedom’s Future

by David J. Kramer and Arch Puddington*
 
As we mark the first anniversary of the events that led to the Arab Spring, it is worth highlighting the uprisings’ far-reaching repercussions for freedom, both in the region and beyond. Freedom in the World, the report on global freedom issued annually by Freedom House, found more declines than gains worldwide for 2011, but we believe that the overarching message for the year is one of hope and not reversal. At a minimum, we can say that developments in the Middle East touched off the most serious challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism. While the challenges today are far more complex than in 1989, the basic theme of captive peoples seeking freedom after decades of oppression is very much the same.

The Best and Worst Human Rights Developments of 2011

by Mary McGuire and Sarah Trister* 

The year 2011 will be remembered as one of immense political and social change around the world, particularly the Middle East. On this International Human Rights Day, Freedom House looks back at a few of the best and worst developments of the year with respect to their long-term implications for the global state of human rights.

Freedom House Questions for Republican Presidential Candidates

It is a core belief of Freedom House that American foreign policy should be grounded on support for democratic values and the global expansion of freedom. Practically every aspirant to the American presidency would agree that the United States should remain the world’s beacon of democracy. But especially in an era of rival claims for global leadership and calls for fiscal austerity, the development of a U.S. strategy to propel freedom forward poses a serious challenge. Thus far, the presidential candidates have failed to grapple with the complexities of this challenge, and the discussion has been far from illuminating, to put it mildly.

Outlook for democracy in post-uprising North Africa

by Mary McGuire
Senior Communications Manager

On November 4, to mark the release of this year’s edition of Countries at the Crossroads, Freedom House and the Atlantic Council hosted a discussion on the prospects for successful democratic transitions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)—particularly in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, which were among six MENA countries examined in the new Crossroads report.

The study, which assesses democratic governance in 35 countries around the world, found that despite promising post-uprising openings in areas including freedom of expression and freedom of association in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the task of “rebuilding basic institutions like the justice system, law enforcement agencies, and regulatory frameworks for the media and civil society, all of which have been warped and corrupted by decades of authoritarian rule, will require many years of effort.”

Clinton embraces the freedom agenda

by Charles Dunne
Director for Middle East and North Africa Programs

 
Eight years and a day after President George W. Bush laid out a broad agenda in support of freedom and representative government in the Middle East at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood before the National Democratic Institute (NDI) on November 7 to essay a detailed overview of the Obama administration’s response to the Arab Spring. The secretary’s remarks did much to advance and clarify the administration’s policy. But their historical continuity with the Bush policy was equally striking. Call it the Bush Freedom Agenda 2.0.

The Tunisian elections in pictures

by     Sarah Trister                               
         Manager for Congressional Affairs

          Joseph Emru     
          Program Officer, Middle East and North Africa

On Sunday, October 23, millions of Tunisians went to the polls for the country’s first elections since a popular uprising ousted authoritarian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January. The balloting, held to select a constituent assembly that will serve as a transitional legislature and draft a new constitution, has been widely hailed as free and fair.

Through its “Nchoof” project, Freedom House worked with a group of local nongovernmental organizations to enable ordinary Tunisians to serve as citizen monitors during the elections. Using a system set up by the project, Tunisians could send and receive critical information, including reports of electoral violations, in real time via voice calls, text or multimedia messaging, Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail.

Nchoof employed Ushahidi open-source crowd-sourcing technology to encourage civic awareness and citizen participation. The technology, originally developed in Kenya, has been used to collect citizen reports during elections and crisis situations in countries around the world, including in a previous Freedom House election-monitoring project in Egypt, and in other projects in Haiti, Mexico, and Lebanon.

The following photographs show the Tunisian elections as Freedom House staff experienced them. Click below to see the photos and the full gallery.

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Democracy is not killing the Copts

by Tyler Roylance
Staff Editor, Publications


Photo Credit: rosemarydukelow

In an October 15 opinion piece in the New York Times, provocatively titled “Democracy’s Collateral Damage,” Ross Douthat makes a series of arguments and observations about ethnicity, democracy, and stability. While they touch on a legitimate scholarly debate about the difficulty of establishing new democracies in multiethnic countries, they also seem to posit dubious cause-and-effect relationships and assign blame where it is clearly not due. Because these arguments sometimes contradict one another, they are best addressed one or two at a time.