democracia participativa y derechos humanos / participatory democracy & human rights

The Press Freedom Index prepared every year by Reporters Without Borders is a highly respected model because of its objectivity.  The 2009 Index has just been published.  You may find a chart with the first 25 and the last 25 ranked among 175 countries below.

The United States has climbed 16 places in the rankings, from 36th to 20th, in just one year. Europe long set an example in press freedom but several European nations have fallen significantly in this year’s index. Even if the first 13 places are still held by European countries, others such as France (43rd), Slovakia (44th) and Italy (49th) continue their descent, falling 8, 37 and 5 places respectively. In so doing, they have given way to young democracies in Africa (Mali, South Africa and Ghana) and the western hemisphere (Uruguay and Trinidad and Tobago).  Journalists are still physically threatened in Italy and Spain (44th), but also in the Balkans, especially Croatia (78th), where the owner and marketing director of the weekly Nacional were killed by a bomb on 23 October 2008.

Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela are way down in this list, taking the 84th, 95th and 124th places.  Cuba is among the last 25.  And no Latin American country is among the first 25.  The highest ranking among these countries are Uruguay and Costa Rica, at the 29th and 30th places, followed by Chile at the 39th place.  In the case of Venezuela, Reporters Without Borders has just taken issue about the moves of President Chavez to curtail freedom of expression in the Internet.  They argue that "False posts cannot be used to justify arbitrary control over the Internet".

In another interesting report about the Internet, they denounce «The Enemies of the Intenet in 2010» in reference to how vulnerable Web users, dissidents and bloggers are when they must face totalitarian governments.

Back to the Press Freedom Index, we may also read that Iranian journalists have suffered more than ever this year in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. The president’s disputed reelection plunged the country into a major crisis and fostered regime paranoia about journalists and bloggers.  Automatic prior censorship, state surveillance of journalists, mistreatment, journalists forced to flee the country, illegal arrests and imprisonment – such is the state of press freedom this year in Iran, among the last five in ranking.

Please, find additional information HERE

2009 [ 2011 below ]

2011

In order to have a bigger spread in the scores and increase the differentiation between countries, this year’s questionnaire had more answers assigning negative points. That is why countries at the top of the index have negative scores this year. Although the point system has produced a broader distribution of scores than in 2010, each country’s evolution over the years can still be plotted by comparing its position in the index rather than its score. This is what the arrows in the table refer to – a country’s change in position in the index compared with the preceding year.

Rank	Country	Score
1	Finland	-10,00
-	Norway	-10,00
3	Estonia	-9,00
-	Netherlands	-9,00
5	Austria	-8,00
6	Iceland	-7,00
-	Luxembourg	-7,00
8	Switzerland	-6,20
9	Cape Verde	-6,00
10	Canada	-5,67
-	Denmark	-5,67
12	Sweden	-5,50
13	New Zealand	-5,33
14	Czech Republic	-5,00
15	Ireland	-4,00
16	Cyprus	-3,00
-	Jamaica	-3,00
-	Germany	-3,00
19	Costa Rica	-2,25
20	Belgium	-2,00
-	Namibia	-2,00
22	Japan	-1,00
-	Surinam	-1,00
24	Poland	-0,67
25	Mali	0,00
-	OECS	0,00
-	Slovakia	0,00

...

150	Afghanistan	74,00
151	Pakistan	75,00
152	Iraq	75,36
153	Palestinian Territories	76,00
154	Kazakhstan	77,50
-	Libya	77,50
156	Rwanda	81,00
157	Uzbekistan	83,00
158	Saudi Arabia	83,25
159	Côte d’Ivoire	83,50
-	Djibouti	83,50
161	Equatorial Guinea	86,00
162	Azerbaijan	87,25
163	Sri Lanka	87,50
164	Somalia	88,33
165	Laos	89,00
166	Egypt	97,50
167	Cuba	98,83
168	Belarus	99,00
169	Burma	100,00
170	Sudan	100,75
171	Yemen	101,00
172	Vietnam	114,00
173	Bahrain	125,00
174	China	136,00
175	Iran	136,60
176	Syria	138,00
177	Turkmenistan	140,67
178	North Korea	141,00
179	Eritrea	142,00