The CIRI Human Rights Data Project, which I co-direct with David Cingranelli and David Richards, has released its

ratings of government respect for 16 internationally-recognized human rights in

almost every country in the world for the year 2011. The CIRI Project’s data stretch back,

annually, to 1981 and can be freely accessed at www.humanrightsdata.org.

This data release has also been accompanied by a number

of changes at the CIRI Project. A new

country was added to the data for 2011 (South Sudan), and the project’s

citation has changed. Perhaps most

importantly, CIRI’s release schedule has changed. In the future, data updates will be issued

annually in January to cover the year that began two years previous. As such, the 2012 ratings will be released in

January 2014.

Without furthre ado, here are four stories from the 2011 data:

THE BEST AND WORST OF 2011

All 14 of CIRI’s indicators of particular human rights

can be summed into an overall human rights score for each country in the

world. The best score a country can

receive is 30, representing high respect for all 14 human rights; the worst

score is 0, representing very low respect for all 14 human rights. The world average was 17, and the USA scored

24 (tied for the 7th highest score, but still ranking behind 37 countries). Below are the best and worst of 2011.

Top 9 Countries – Overall Respect

Luxembourg [30]

Netherlands [29]

New Zealand [29]

San Marino [29]

Andorra [28]

Australia [28]

Denmark [28]

Iceland [28]

Norway [28]

Bottom 9 Countries – Overall Respect

Iran [1]

Eritrea [2]

Saudi Arabia [2]

Burma [3]

China [3]

Libya [3]

Yemen [3]

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [4]

Syria [4]

STABILITY & CHANGE IN RESPECT FOR PHYSICAL

INTEGRITY RIGHTS

The CIRI Physical Integrity Rights Index measures

government respect for the freedoms from torture, extrajudicial killing,

political imprisonment, and disappearance. It varies from 0 (no respect for

physical integrity rights) to 8 (full respect for physical integrity

rights). Overall, government respect for

physical integrity declined in 2011, as the mean score on the physical

integrity rights index fell from 5.01 in 2010 to 4.82 in 2011. In particular, respect for physical integrity

rights saw the following dramatic changes in 2010-2011:

Largest Declines in Respect for Physical Integrity

Rights

Bahrain [-5]

Djibouti [-3]

Egypt [-3]

Republic of Korea [-3]

Libya [-3]

Mauritania [-3]

Oman [-3]

Largest Improvements in Respect for Physical Integrity Rights

Panama [+4]

Croatia [+3]

Belarus [+2]

Nepal [+2]

Togo [+2]

Further, as these lists suggest, it would appear that

changes in government respect for physical integrity rights in 2011 were not

evenly distributed across the globe.

Indeed, as demonstrated below, South Asian states

experienced a net improvement in average government respect for physical integrity,

while some of the largest declines in government respect for physical integrity

rights were concentrated in the Near East & North Africa:

Average Change in Respect for Physical Integrity

Rights by Region

Africa [-0.04]

East Asia & the Pacific [-0.12]

Europe & Eurasia [0]

Near East & North Africa [-1.37]

South Asia [+0.25]

Western Hemisphere [-0.11]

THE “ARAB SPRING” & HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE NEAR EAST

& NORTH AFRICA

Beginning in Tunisia in December 2010, the wave of

demonstrations, protests, and conflicts known as the “Arab Spring” swept

through the Arab world in 2011. What

effect did this have on respect for human rights in the Near East and North

Africa (as defined by the US State Department)?

Table 1 displays the change in the overall human rights score, as well

as in the CIRI Physical Integrity Rights Index, from 2010 to 2011.

As can be seen, most states in the region demonstrated

reduced respect for human rights in 2011, particularly those states that

experienced some of the highest levels of unrest that year, e.g. Bahrain,

Libya, and Egypt. Of course, other

states, like Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, already had extremely low

scores on our indicators and thus, had little room to move down. On the other hand, Tunisia experienced a

large increase in its overall human rights score, owing to the overthrow of its

government early in the year and the elections held in October. However, this was not enough to overcome the

high level of physical integrity rights abuse that accompanied the protests

early in the year, which led to a decrease in respect for physical integrity

rights from an already low score of 3 in 2010 to 2 in 2011.

STABILITY & CHANGE IN WOMEN’S RIGHTS

CIRI also annually codes two measures of

internationally-recognized women’s rights: women’s political rights and

women’s economic rights. The women’s

political rights measure is aimed at capturing the degree to which government

laws and practices ensure that women enjoy the rights to vote, to run for

political office, to hold elected and appointed government positions, to join

political parties, and to petition government officials. The women’s economic rights measure captures

the degree to which government laws and practices ensure that women enjoy equal

pay for equal work, free choice of profession or employment, the right to

gainful employment, equality in hiring and promotion, job security, freedom

from discrimination by employers, freedom from sexual harassment, and the right

to work in dangerous professions, including working at night and working in the

military and police forces.

Our two measures of women’s rights moved in opposite

directions in 2011. While women’s

political rights improved for the second straight year, women’s economic rights

suffered a setback after two consecutive years of improvement. Indeed, this is in keeping with these

measures’ performance over time. As

shown in the graph below, respect for women’s economic rights has lagged behind

respect for women’s political rights consistently since 1981. However, that gap has widened with time, as

respect for women’s political rights has consistently grown while respect for

women’s economic rights has remained relatively flat.

Note: The shapefile used to construct the above map comes from Weidmann, Kuse, and Gleditsch’s cshapes, version 0.4-2. The map was made using Pisati’s spmap package in Stata 12.1. Another version of this post can be viewed at the CIRI Human Rights Data Project Blog.

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