A Humanitarian Crisis: Civil Liberties on the Decline
The recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine has captivated the world because of its political and humanitarian implications. Western nations view Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an attack on democracy, and an incursion on the Civil liberties held by the people of Ukraine. Although Ukraine has the free world’s attention, the humanitarian crisis related to the deprivation of civil liberties is happening all over the world, and in some regions, current trends could prove devastating for the freedoms of millions of people.
This graph was created by using data from the Democracy Index an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the Economist Group. Which provides scores for different categories that give a measurement to the level of democracy each country has achieved. This data was then combined with regional data from The World Bank to group countries into the UN regions they are associated with. As demonstrated by the graph the average civil liberty score for each UN region has been steadily decreasing since 2010. The most concerning regions are Africa and Asia having the lowest original scores, and seeing some of the largest drops in average scores. To properly take action against the humanitarian crisis resulting from the loss of freedoms, factors that contribute to decreasing average civil liberty must be carefully analyzed.
In addition to providing the civil liberty scores for each country the Democracy Index also provides scores relating to political participation, political culture, political process, and pluralism. Political participation scores reflect the public opinion on different mechanisms for the public to express opinions — and ideally exert influence — regarding political, economic, management, or other social decisions. The political culture data refers to a set of shared views and normative judgments held by a population regarding its political system. Lastly, the political process and pluralism data refer to public opinion on the formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Additionally, this data also refers to how centralized political and decision-making power is held within a government.
To figure out how action should be properly taken I first compared each UN region’s (Africa and Asia) average civil liberty compared to their average political participation from 2010 to 2021.
As demonstrated by the graphs it is apparent that political participation seems to have an inverse effect on the civil liberties held by citizens of these UN regions. In a separate analysis regarding each region's average political culture score and average civil liberty. The data presented no statistical correlation or significance between political culture and declining civil liberties in the Africa and Asia UN regions. The last category to be analyzed was political process and pluralism which yielded statistically significant results.
From these graphs, it’s obvious that the degree of democracy that is involved within the electoral process of each region has a direct effect on the average civil liberty score for each region. Additionally, the amount of centralization of power and decision-making in each region is directly linked to average civil liberty scores. From this, it can be gathered that to ensure that the civil liberties of citizens all around the world are protected, a truly democratic process must take place when electing public officials and making decisions.
In the case of Ukraine and other nations on the brink of losing their democratic process, it is crucial that democracies all over the world fight for and defend these electoral processes. From the evidence presented it is clear that when democracy is not protected and preserved, the civil liberties of millions will be lost. If free nations fail to act in cases like Ukraine, and similar cases around the world their duty to protect and serve the democratic process is simply an empty promise. Nations based on democracy have failed their responsibility to millions around the world in preserving civil liberties and preventing humanitarian crises.
In conclusion, all UN regions are experiencing declining average civil liberty scores over the past 11 years. The two regions that began with the lowest scores and saw the largest drops in scores also experienced large decreases in their political process and pluralism. This exemplifies the need for the democratic process for assigning power and decision-making as the main factor contributing to civil liberties experienced by a population. Free nations around the world must act in ways that protect the democratic process in order to avoid humanitarian crises around the world.
