United States: Freedom in the World 2021 Country Report

Table Of Content

• Press & Media
• Electoral Process
• Sudan: One Year into Conflict, Freedom House Urges United Action to End Violence and Aid Democratic Transition
• Public Tours
• Paramedics found guilty in Elijah McClain’s death following ketamine injection
• United States: Indictment of Former President Trump Is a Test and Opportunity for US Democracy
• Functioning of Government

The changes also permitted the chief executive to hold ministerial positions and dissolve the legislature after it has served just half of its term. Freedom of personal expression, which has experienced the largest declines of any democracy indicator since 2012, was further restrained during the health crisis. In the midst of a heavy-handed lockdown in the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte, the authorities stepped up harassment and arrests of social media users, including those who criticized the government’s pandemic response.

Press & Media

In Georgia in 2018, for example, the registrations of some 53,000 voters—most of them Black—were stalled due to applicant information that did not exactly match government records, and hundreds of thousands of other voters had been purged from the rolls for failing to vote in recent elections. A number of important laws are designed to ensure the political rights of members of racial and ethnic minority groups, and the 2020 elections featured increased participation as candidates by women and representatives of such groups. The Congress elected in 2020 included the first openly gay Black House members and record or near-record numbers of Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islander, LGBT+, and women lawmakers.

Electoral Process

Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all. Ethiopia had also made democratic progress in recent years, as new prime minister Abiy Ahmed lifted restrictions on opposition media and political groups and released imprisoned journalists and political figures. In July 2020, a popular ethnic Oromo singer was killed, leading to large protests in the Oromia Region that were marred by attacks on non-Oromo populations, a violent response by security forces, and the arrest of thousands of people, including many opposition figures.

Sudan: One Year into Conflict, Freedom House Urges United Action to End Violence and Aid Democratic Transition

In Hungary, for example, a series of emergency measures allowed the government to rule by decree despite the fact that coronavirus cases were negligible in the country until the fall. Among other misuses of these new powers, the government withdrew financial assistance from municipalities led by opposition parties. The push for greater executive authority was in keeping with the gradual concentration of power that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been orchestrating over the past decade. But beyond their impact in 2020, official responses to COVID-19 have laid the groundwork for government excesses that could affect democracy for years to come.

Public Tours

In Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa dissolved the parliament in early March, intending to hold elections the following month. The pandemic delayed the vote, however, giving Rajapaksa the opportunity to rule virtually unchecked and consolidate power through various ministerial appointments. After his party swept the August elections, the new parliament approved constitutional amendments that expanded presidential authority, including by allowing Rajapaksa to appoint electoral, police, human rights, and anticorruption commissions.

Tulane student gets New Orleans civil rights activist's home added to National Register of Historic Places - Tulane University

Tulane student gets New Orleans civil rights activist's home added to National Register of Historic Places.

Posted: Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Clients attend individual therapy while also attending a 12 Step program in a supportive environment during their stay. Learn more about the current state of democracy in the United States, review the work of the Task Force on US Strategy to Support Democracy and Counter Authoritarianism, and discover how a strong democratic government in the United States can help improve conditions for others worldwide. Total scores across the various categories are based on a 100-point scale and correspond to statues of Free, Partly Free, and Not Free. Freedom House is a nonprofit organization with approximately 300 staff members worldwide.[35] Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and also countries in Central Asia. Find reports from 1972 to the present, including full PDF reports downloads and historical data in Excel format. Since its founding, Freedom House has monitored the state of freedom and democracy around the world, and helped shaped the debate on the most pressing issues of our time.

United States: Indictment of Former President Trump Is a Test and Opportunity for US Democracy

An anonymous whistleblower from the Central Intelligence Agency who filed the complaint that touched off the impeachment inquiry in 2019 faced extreme pressure from the president and his allies, including attempts to publicize their identity. Although the whistleblower’s identity was never publicly confirmed, the individual was forced into protective surveillance amid threats of violence. Following his February 2020 acquittal in the Senate, President Trump fired or forced the resignation of several officials who offered testimony that harmed his case during the House impeachment process. Observers warned that the situation could deter officials from reporting possible corruption in the future. In October, the president signed an executive order calling for many senior civil servants to be reclassified in a manner that could allow them to be fired for political or other arbitrary reasons, further weakening their ability to report malfeasance; implementation of the order remained unclear at year’s end.

Fitness Therapy

By incorporating movement into counseling sessions, clients become more empowered, motivated, and goal-oriented, all while strengthening their bodies and becoming more flexible. Fitness Therapy is usually used to complement a course of treatment (inpatient or outpatient) to make it even more successful. Increasing the connection between a patient’s mind and body helps both with healing as well as in creating new, healthy habits. Commonly known as “day treatment,” a partial hospitalization program (PHP) is an intensive form of outpatient treatment where clients meet during the day and return home in the evening. PHP treatment doesn't require 24-hour care and often serves as an alternative to inpatient hospitalization or a step-down after a residential program.

Similar critiques have been directed at the constitution’s allocation of two Senate seats to each state regardless of population. Defenders of these systems argue that they are fundamental to the United States’ federal structure, in which the states enjoy a substantial degree of autonomy, and claim that they ensure due political attention to parts of the country’s territory that might otherwise be neglected. Some states have adopted strict voter-identification laws whose documentation requirements can disproportionately limit participation by poor, elderly, or racial minority voters; people with disabilities; and university students.

A rare bright spot in a region replete with deeply entrenched authoritarian leaders, Armenia has experienced tentative gains in freedom since mass antigovernment protests erupted in 2018 and citizens voted in a more reform-minded government. But Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s capitulation in the war sparked a violent reaction among some opponents, who stormed the parliament in November and physically attacked the speaker. Such disorder threatens the country’s hard-won progress, and could set off a chain of events that draws Armenia closer to the autocratic tendencies of its neighbors. India, the world’s most populous democracy, dropped from Free to Partly Free status in Freedom in the World 2021. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its state-level allies continued to crack down on critics during the year, and their response to COVID-19 included a ham-fisted lockdown that resulted in the dangerous and unplanned displacement of millions of internal migrant workers.

The coronavirus-related economic shock amplified this dynamic, disrupting employment and income for lower-earning, less-educated workers far more than for college-educated professionals. Although the country has legal safeguards against unsafe working conditions, workers in essential industries such as meat processing faced a high risk of contracting COVID-19 in practice, with inadequate protective equipment and hazard pay. Poorer children who lacked the resources to adapt to remote learning were also most harmed by pandemic-linked school closures, which threatened to exacerbate educational inequality. In 2018, under pressure from a bipartisan coalition advocating for reforms to curb mass incarceration, Congress passed and the president signed a law that eased federal mandatory-minimum sentencing rules, among other modest changes. A majority of states have also passed laws in recent years to reduce sentences for certain crimes, decriminalize minor drug offenses, and combat recidivism; such gradual steps continued in 2020. Some states have restricted the use of cash bail, which can unfairly penalize defendants with fewer resources and enlarge pretrial jail populations.

Given many competing priorities, including the pandemic and its socioeconomic aftermath, President Biden will have to remain steadfast, keeping in mind that democracy is a continuous project of renewal that ultimately ensures security and prosperity while upholding the fundamental rights of all people. The COVID-19 pandemic is not the only current global emergency that has the potential to hasten the erosion of democracy. The effects of climate change could have a similar long-term impact, with mass displacement fueling conflict and more nationalist, xenophobic, and racist policies.

Medical training for ambulance workers — along with the design of the ambulances, including the sirens, the flashing lights and radios for talking with doctors at the hospital — were created by Freedom House. The inflation-adjusted national minimum wage has fallen substantially since the 1960s, with the last nominal increase in 2009, though many states and localities have enacted increases since then. Other obstacles to gainful employment include inadequate public transportation and the high cost of living in economically dynamic cities and regions. The latter problem, which is exacerbated by exclusionary housing policies in many jurisdictions, has also contributed to an overall rise in homelessness in recent years. Conditions in prisons, jails, and pretrial detention centers are often poor at the state and local levels, and in 2020 COVID-19 outbreaks occurred at facilities across the country, producing infections and deaths at much higher rates than in the general population. Many jurisdictions and the federal government took steps to ease crowding by releasing suspects and convicted inmates who were deemed less dangerous.