Here is the download the report 'People Power Under Attack' (pdf)
[The website and the report are also available in Spanish and French.]
The CIVICUS Monitor tracks the state of freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression in 198 countries and territories around the globe since 2017.
The annual report 2024, "People Power Under Attack", rates the state of civic space conditions based on data collected throughout the year from country-focused civil society organisations, regionally-based research teams, international human rights indices and the CIVICUS Monitor's in-house experts. Using data from these four sources, Civicus to assigns each country and territory a rating as either open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed or closed.
Summary:
- Three in four people -72.4 percent- worldwide live in highly oppressive countries, marking a slight increase of 1.5 percentage points compared to 2023, with only 40 out of 198 nations maintaining open civic spaces. In nine cases, the overall rating was downgraded. This affected Burkina Faso, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kenya, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Peru and the Occupied Palestine Territories.
- As CIVICUS’ Co-Secretary-General Mandeep Tiwana pointed out, “civic space conditions in some 30 countries where over a quarter of the world’s population live are so poor that even the slightest hint of dissent against those who hold power can get one thrown into prison for a long time or even killed.” This includes Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Sudan.
- The right to protest isheavily targeted globally, with at least 76 countries on record. Cases include mass detentions or police brutality against young climate and environmental activists, as seen in Indonesia, Brazil and Ghana.
- As violence continues to escalate, human rights defenders remain particularly vulnerable, with unjustified arrests documented in 58 countries, especially of women facing draconian restrictions under several authoritarian regimes.
- Despite the overall negative trends, four countries -Japan, Jamaica, Slovenia and Trinidad and Tobago- have moved into the highest category of having open civic space. Five other countries -Bangladesh, Botswana, Fiji, Liberia, Poland- improved their ratings according to the report.