By Mark Dovich
Armenia remains the most democratic country in the South Caucasus and one of the freest countries in the entire former Soviet region, the Washington-based non-profit Freedom House has determined.
In the latest edition of its annual Nations in Transit report, published Thursday, Freedom House found that democracy in Armenia regressed somewhat in the last year, though overall, the country remains slightly freer than neighboring Georgia. In the broader Eurasia region, only Moldova and Ukraine rank higher than Armenia.
In this year’s report, Armenia received a rating of 3.07, down slightly from last year’s figure of 3.11, but still ahead of Georgia’s 3.04 score, which was unchanged from the year before. Freedom House cited declining “national democratic governance” indicators in Armenia to justify the downgrade.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan and Russia were each given ratings of 1.07, putting them among the least free of more than two dozen countries surveyed, with only Turkmenistan scoring lower.
Every year, Freedom House assesses political reform in former communist states in Europe and Eurasia through “democracy scores.” That system considers a variety of factors and then expresses a country’s overall democratic nature as a number on a scale from 1 to 7, with 7 being the freest.
Aside from Armenia, nine other countries’ scores declined-year-on-year, compared to just five countries whose ratings improved. That means last year was the 20th year straight where democracy in the Europe and Eurasia region as a whole regressed.
“The continued assault on basic freedoms by Eurasian autocracies and the deterioration of democratic institutions in countries ranked as hybrid regimes — those with a mix of autocratic and democratic features — easily outweighed the modest gains by European democracies over the past year,” Freedom House wrote.
Armenia is one of 11 countries the non-profit categorizes as “hybrid regimes” and ranks below-average on measures of national and local governance and judicial independence, among others.
Armenia’s downgrade this year comes after the country earned “the largest two-year improvement ever recorded” in the immediate aftermath of the 2018 revolution that catapulted Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to power.
Those steps toward democracy continue to be threatened by Azerbaijan, Freedom House found, particularly in the aftermath of the country’s forcible capture of Nagorno-Karabakh last September.
“Moscow’s war to destroy Ukraine and the Azerbaijani regime’s military conquest and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh laid bare the deadly consequences of autocracy’s expansion,” the non-profit wrote.
It added: “There is an obvious potential for more authoritarian aggression in the Caucasus. Moscow has effectively abdicated as the area’s security guarantor.”
In addition, Freedom House publishes a yearly Freedom in the World report, a widely-cited assessment of rights and liberties worldwide on a country-by-country basis. In this year’s report, the organization considered Armenia and Georgia to be “partly free,” while ranking Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, and Turkey as “not free.”
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