Freedom House drops Maldives, Mali from list of electoral democracies

The Maldives is one of two countries to be dropped from Freedom House’s list of electoral democracies, in its annual survey of political rights and civil liberties.

The other, Mali, is a landlocked nation in West Africa which experienced a coup d’état on March 21 and is now battling a surge in Islamic extremism, harsh sanctions and foreign military intervention.

Freedom House is an independent, non-government watchdog organisation dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world. The NGO assesses and scores countries for political rights and civil liberties each year, and labels them ‘free’, ‘partly free’, or ‘not free’.

The Maldives’s political rights rating shifted from three to five (higher is less free) during 2012, “due to the forcible removal of democratically elected president Mohamed Nasheed, violence perpetrated against him and his party, the suspension of the parliament’s summer session, and the role of the military in facilitating these events,” Freedom House stated. Civil liberties remained at a score of four.

The country remained listed as “partly free” for the third time, after being upgraded from ‘not free’ in 2009 following the 2008 presidential election.

According to Freedom House’s definition, a partly free country “is one in which there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties. Partly free states frequently suffer from an environment of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and a political landscape in which a single party enjoys dominance despite a certain degree of pluralism.”

Approximately 46 of the world’s population live in ‘free’ countries, while 47 live in those designated ‘not free’. “Noteworthy gains” in freedom were made in Egypt, Libya, Burma, and the Côte d’Ivoire. Lesotho, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tonga moved from ‘party free’ to ‘free’.

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9 thoughts on “Freedom House drops Maldives, Mali from list of electoral democracies”

  1. Freedomhouse
    from their website:
    "...Freedom House believes that LGBTI rights are a fundamental part of human rights...."

    So basically this is a just another worthless ngo thriving basically on begging. They have the donate button in their website and people donate, to this beggar ngo. Their problem is values. If they believe being homo is a fundamental human right then where is the right for ppl who do incest? what about bestiality? Is it that bad?
    Reflection: Homo's can never create babies but babies are born to incestual relations. Its also pretty common in wealthy classes in ancient egypt to wed in to their families to keep their wealth in the family. so why not describe this also as a fundamental human right?

    See the point? Just some nameless faceless beggar organization setting our agenda for us? Just who are these monkeys to tell us how much is our human score?

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  2. who cares? if we want to drop then from lists, we can also drop from them from a good number of lists. take a moment to think about the western beautiful word of democracy which in its origin was meant to be a system to keep away women, persons of mixed ethnicity, serfs, slaves and younger out of the way of a group of selfish men dictating what others need to do. does it sound so beautiful at all? so these so called freedom house or whatever better cut the crap and get on their lives (by the way i just generalized. my apology if i offended anyone keeping in mind that there good and gentle people all around the world)

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  3. @Muhammad. That's probably the most stupid definition of democracy I have ever read. You brother, are an idiot.

    I ask you this. Are you serving the government or are they serving you?

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  4. This is a surprise? Well the surprise would be why they have not noticed it before.

    Our constitution does not allow gay, lesbian, incest!

    Thats a fact!

    We DO NOT want them.

    The democracy we are willing to accommodate is up to the point of electing a president, parliament, rules and regulations within the boundaries of Islam.

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  5. Ahmed, you call me an idiot. ok, never mind. but if you also read history books you will know the reality of Athenian democracy. I studied in a University in South Africa.

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  6. Ahmed, do u know the meaning of democracy. it come from demost and cratos. unfortunately for the Athens rulers "women, serfs, younger, mixed people" were not people, thus they could argue they involved all people. This is my second comment in replying to you. Just hoping that you will get a little more insight into it.

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  7. What you fail to realize is democracy has developed since Ancient Greece. No one wants such an ancient system of democracy and very few support gays and lesbians. Freedom house has many measures of freedom however their falling ranking for the Maldives was based on....

    "due to the forcible removal of democratically elected president Mohamed Nasheed, violence perpetrated against him and his party, the suspension of the parliament’s summer session, and the role of the military in facilitating these events"

    Nothing to do with gays and lesbians! Human being brought that up in his 1st comment. Freedom House didn't mention it.

    It's normal though. As soon as an external agency criticizes Maldives, the blind/ignorant ones attack that agency. The only people who suffer in the long run are Maldivians.

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  8. @Oho "very few support gays and lesbians" - are you sure about this? If you bother to do a little research rather than just relying on your own bigoted opinion you will find that homosexuality is legal in more countries in the world than it is illegal.

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