THE Philippines maintained its “partly free” status in the 2018 World Freedom Index with a score of 62/100, despite the Duterte administration’s bloody war on illegal drugs.
The Philippines, along with Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia and Hong Kong were all rated “partly free,” according to a US-based non-governmental organization committed to the expansion of democracy around the world.
The Freedom in the World 2018 report on political rights and civil liberties warned of the rise of anti-democratic forces across Asia-Pacific. North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand were deemed “not free,” the watchdog group said.
The country also scored three out of seven in freedom ranking, political rights and civil liberties. Countries were rated one (most free) to seven (least free).
The human rights advocacy group has yet to release a full report on the status of the Philippines, which is among the 58 countries that qualified as “partly free.”
Last year, the Philippines received three points each for political rights and civil liberties (one point represents the most free and seven the least free) but its aggregate score dropped to 63, from 65 in 2015, because of “human rights violations of varying scale with impunity.”
It was observed that the downward trend was due to the thousands of victims of summary executions or extrajudicial killings of suspected drug pushers and users.
In its latest report, 30 percent of all countries assessed were “partly free” and were home to nearly 1.8 billion people or 24 percent of the world’s total.
A total of 88 countries were designated as “free” while 49 countries were deemed “not free.”