NGO Freedom House released its 2018 Freedom in the World index and Greece is ranked among the “free” countries with an aggregate score of 85/100. Sweden, Norway, and Finland received a perfect 100/100 score, while Syria had the lowest aggregate score with -1. Most of the worst countries in terms of freedom were Islamic majority. These included, among others Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. Russia was also considered not free with a score of 20/100. 88 countries were characterised “free”, as opposed to 49 that were dubbed “not free”. Seventy-one countries suffered net declines in political rights and civil liberties, with only 35 registering gains. This marked the 12th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The NGO concluded that:
Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies—particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and the rule of law—are under assault and in retreat globally.
“A quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared that totalitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy had won the great ideological battle of the 20th century.
Today, it is democracy that finds itself battered and weakened. For the 12th consecutive year, according to Freedom in the World, countries that suffered democratic setbacks outnumbered those that registered gains. States that a decade ago seemed like promising success stories—Turkey and Hungary, for example—are sliding into authoritarian rule. The military in Myanmar, which began a limited democratic opening in 2010, executed a shocking campaign of ethnic cleansing in 2017 and rebuffed international criticism of its actions. Meanwhile, the world’s most powerful democracies are mired in seemingly intractable problems at home, including social and economic disparities, partisan fragmentation, terrorist attacks, and an influx of refugees that has strained alliances and increased fears of the “other.”