Freedom means different things to different people.

But Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization that releases an annual report on freedom around the world, measures it in terms of civil liberties and political rights.

Their annual report, Freedom in the World, "operates from the assumption that freedom for all people is best achieved in liberal democratic societies."

In 2018, more than 130 in-house and external analysts and advisers from academia, think tanks, and human rights institutions created the report by collecting data from media, research articles, government documents, and other sources.

That data was then used to score a country's political rights on a scale of 0-40 and its civil liberties on a scale of 0-60.

Freedom House measured political rights by the degree with which a country's elections are free and fair, as well as by how much political pluralism and participation there is. Civil liberties, on the other hand, were measured by how free and independent the media is and how much freedom of expression and assembly there is.

In the ranking below, countries with a shared freedom rating were listed by alphabetical order, except for the three countries that received the top score.

Check out the 27 countries with the most freedom below: