According to the World Justice Project’s (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2017-18, Pakistan has been ranked at 105 out of 113 countries. Pakistan has fared poorly yet again in the annual rankings, ending up in the bottom 10 of the list.

According to the 7th edition of the report, Venezuela is the worst country when it comes to the rule of law with an overall score of 0.29. 3 Asian countries are included in the bottom 10 of the list: Pakistan (105), Afghanistan (111) and Cambodia (112).

Three nations in #Asia make the bottom 10 of this list looking at adherence to the law. Then again, one needs #RuleOfLaw & #trust in government as a foundation… 🇰🇭 #Cambodia

🇦🇫 #Afghanistan

🇵🇰 #Pakistan Via World Justice Project

Ht @BryanDruzin pic.twitter.com/J9ErL2FBeu — 🚶🏻Curtis S. Chin (@CurtisSChin) June 15, 2018

Ranking Criteria

WJP’s Rule of Law Index is an annual report which ranks more than 100 countries on the basis of adherence to the law.

The countries are ranked based on these 8 factors:

Constraints on Government Powers Absence of Corruption Open Government Fundamental Rights Order and Security Regulatory Enforcement Civil Justice Criminal Justice

Each of these 8 factors had 3-8 sub-factors which were ranked individually to get a cumulative score for each factor. The overall score of these 8 factors combined to generate an overall score from 0-1, with 1 depicting strong rule of law while 0 showing no adherence to the law.

Top 10 Countries

The European countries lead the way when it comes to following the law, with top 6 spots being bagged by European nations.

Here are the top 10 countries where people are most likely to follow the rule of law:

Denmark (0.89) Norway (0.89) Finland (0.87) Sweden (0.86) Netherlands (0.85) Germany (0.83) New Zealand (0.81) Austria (0.81) Canada (0.81) Australia (0.81)

Pakistan’s Case

Among the 6 South Asian countries, Pakistan is listed on the 5th place with Afghanistan lagging behind at the last spot.

Pakistan has actually improved one position from last year with an overall score of 0.39, as depicted in the report.

Pakistan earned the best score (66/113) for ‘Constraints of Government Powers’, while the worst one was for ‘Order and Security’ where it got the 113th rank.

Here are the ranks for individual factors:

Constraints on Government Powers – 66 Absence of Corruption – 99 Open Government – 80 Fundamental Rights – 100 Order and Security – 113 Regulatory Enforcement – 105 Civil Justice – 107 Criminal Justice – 81

For detailed scoring, refer to the image below:

Pakistan’s rank is slowly getting better; Pakistan was ranked at 109 in 2015-16, 106 in 2016-17 and now 105 in 2017-18 edition of the report. However, the rank needs to get better quickly and the government needs to step up its game.

Source: WJP