04/11/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/10/2024 22:19
WASHINGTON-Moscow's war to destroy Ukraine and the Azerbaijani regime's military conquest and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 have accelerated a geopolitical reordering in the 29 countries stretching from Central Europe to Central Asia. The trend led to a 20th consecutive year of decline in democratic governance for the region, according to a report released today by Freedom House.
Nations in Transit 2024: A Region Reordered by Autocracy and Democracyfound that 10 out of the 29 countries under analysis suffered declines in their overall Democracy Score, while only five countries registered score improvements. Escalating authoritarian attacks on basic rights and liberties have increasingly pushed countries into two opposing blocs: those committed to a liberal, democratic order and those that violently reject it.
"Authoritarian regimes are stepping up their attacks and undermining democratic governance across the region," said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House. "In Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, we've already seen the devastating consequences of authoritarian expansion, and there's no reason to believe it will stop there. Unless democracies act urgently and consistently to uphold their own interests and values, more territory will be lost to dictatorship and repression."
Of the eight countries classified by the report as Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes-settings where autocrats prevent political competition and pluralism through widespread violations of basic rights-four suffered declines in their already abysmal Democracy Scores: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. As such regimes closed off the remaining space for dissent and created conditions to extend their rule indefinitely, they also actively supported one another's efforts to evade sanctions, crush domestic opposition, and blunt any accountability for military aggression and other violations of international law.
The following are among the report's other findings:
"The fate of European democracy now depends in large part on the willingness of democratic states to adopt a more active approach to security in the region, most urgently by supporting Ukraine," said Mike Smeltzer, report coauthor and senior research analyst for Europe and Eurasia. "Any failure to stand up for democracy during this critical moment will make it more costly to check authoritarian expansion in the future, both in the region and around the world. The United States and Europe must act now to ensure the defeat of Moscow's invasion and to protect democratic institutions and norms more broadly."
The report identifies a number of steps that democratic governments can take to roll back authoritarian gains and revitalize democracy in the region. The recommendations include:
Since 1995, Nations in Transithas evaluated the state of democracy in the region stretching from Central Europe to Central Asia, and categorized each country by its regime type. The 26th edition of this annual study covers events from January 1 through December 31, 2023.
Click hereto read the full report and policy recommendations. Click here to read translated versions of the press release: Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, German.
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Freedom House is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to create a world where all are free. We inform the world about threats to freedom, mobilize global action, and support democracy's defenders.