Rights decline but bright spots in South Asia Freedom House

WASHINGTON - Freedom declined around the world in 2024 with authoritarians solidifying their grip, but South Asia led a series of bright spots, Freedom House said on Feb 26 in its annual report.

The Washington-based pro-democracy research group elevated two countries to the status of “free” – Senegal, where the opposition triumphed after the outgoing president’s attempt to delay elections was defeated, and Bhutan, the Himalayan kingdom which consolidated a transition to democracy with competitive polls.

Tiny Bhutan gained the distinction of being the only South Asian country classified as free.

But others in the region made strong gains in the index without changing categories – Bangladesh, where leader Sheikh Hasina fled in the face of a revolt, and Sri Lanka, where Mr Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected president on an anti-corruption platform after breaking the stranglehold of the two long-dominant parties.

The largest score improvement in the index, which tracks both countries and territories, was in Indian-administered Kashmir, which held elections for the first time since the Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi revoked the Muslim-majority region’s special status in 2019.

But Freedom House said India as a whole saw further deterioration as it pointed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to gain influence over judicial appointments.

The group downgraded the world’s largest democracy from “free” to “partly free” in 2021.

Ms Yana Gorokhovskaia, the co-author of the report, said it was the 19th consecutive year that freedom fell on a global level, but that 2024 was especially volatile due to the high number of elections.

“The big picture is that this was another year of the same trajectory of a global decline in freedom but because of all the elections, it was more dynamic than previous years,” she said.

She said that both Bangladesh and Syria, where