On January 13, 2011, Freedom House released its findings from the latest edition of Freedom in the World, the annual survey of global political rights and civil liberties. According to the survey’s findings, 2010 was the fifth consecutive year in which global freedom suffered a decline—the longest period of setbacks for freedom in the nearly 40-year history of the report. These declines threaten gains dating to the post–Cold War era in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the former Soviet bloc. The latest survey hightlights the increasing truculence of the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes, which has coincided with a growing inability or unwillingness on the part of the world’s democracies to meet the authoritarian challenge...

As the year 2010 drew to a close, a series of disturbing events brought into sharp relief the challenges confronting the partisans of global freedom. In the most notorious case, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party created an unprecedented international confrontation over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident intellectual Liu Xiaobo. Having failed to intimidate the Nobel committee into rejecting Liu, the authorities in Beijing threatened economic retaliation against Norway, hinted at reprisals against other governments that sent representatives to the award ceremony, and cast a dragnet for Liu’s relatives and fellow dissidents, dozens of whom were arrested or confined to their homes by police.

As the year 2010 drew to a close, a series of disturbing events brought into sharp relief the challenges confronting the partisans of global freedom. In the most notorious case, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party created an unprecedented international confrontation over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident intellectual Liu Xiaobo. Having failed to intimidate the Nobel committee into rejecting Liu, the authorities in Beijing threatened economic retaliation against Norway, hinted at reprisals against other governments that sent representatives to the award ceremony, and cast a dragnet for Liu’s relatives and fellow dissidents, dozens of whom were arrested or confined to their homes by police...

Features graphical representations of global and regional breakdowns for freedom status, political rights and civil liberties ratings for each country and territory, the number and percentage of electoral democracies over the last two decades, and the total number of Free, Partly Free, and Not Free countries for each year since the survey began in 1972. Includes a summary of the Freedom in the World methodology...

This color-coded map of the world identifies the Free, Partly Free, and Not Free countries in 2010...

These color-coded maps identify the Free, Partly Free, and Not Free countries in 2010 in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union...