Freedom around the world refers to people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in different countries and territories. There are several organizations that track and report on freedom around the world, including Freedom House and the United Nations[1][2][3][5]. Freedom House produces an annual report called “Freedom in the World” that rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries and territories. The report measures the degree of civil liberties and political rights in every nation and significant related and disputed territories around the world, and individual freedoms can be affected by state or nonstate actors[2][3]. The report is often used by researchers to measure democracy and correlates highly with several other measures of democracy such as the Polity data series[3].
Humanium, an organization that advocates for children’s rights, notes that international norms recognize that children have the right to freedom of opinion, expression, and association. However, in many countries, these rights are reserved for adults, and the opinion of children is judged useless, since they lack sufficient experience[4].
According to Our World in Data, human rights have become much more protected around the world. In the late 18th century, human rights were poorly protected, and people’s physical integrity and private and political civil liberties were not respected by their governments. However, in recent years, people have enjoyed freedoms of association, property rights, and freedom of movement and religion[6].
Citations:
[1] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world
[2] https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World
[4] https://www.humanium.org/en/right-to-freedom/
[5] https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/human-rights
[6] https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights