According to monitoring organisation Article 19, more than two-thirds of the world's population has less freedom of expression than a decade ago. RFI spoke with the NGO's senior director David Diaz-Jogeix about the results of its report.
More than 5.6 billion people have experienced "a decline in their freedom of expression over the last 10 years," according to Article 19, which published its annual Global Expression Report this week.
Scores have dropped in 77 countries, with only 35 now ranked as "open".
According to the report, just 4 percent of the world's total population – fewer than 300 million people – across 15 countries have seen an improvement in freedom of expression over the last decade.
For every one person who has experienced an improvement, 19 people have faced a deterioration.
Article 19 grades freedom of expression using a ranking of five terms – open, less restricted, restricted, highly restricted and crisis.
The three highest ranked countries this year are Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden (with 94, 93 and 93 points respectively) and at the bottom are Belarus, Nicaragua and North Korea (1, 1 and 0 points).
RFI spoke to David Diaz-Jogeix, Article 19's senior director of programmes.
RFI: What are the main drivers behind the decline in freedom of expression as registered by your report?
David Diaz-Jogeix: We have an overall trend of authoritarian regimes and authoritarian policies by democratic governments that is really taking [hold]. We have the big perpetrators in terms of repressing freedom of expression, countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, India, Egypt, Turkey, Rwanda. These countries continue to persevere in a total repression on terms of freedom of expression and that makes the bulk of the big perpetrators.
But ironically, you see a very clear pattern of deterioration of the freedom of expression in western countries. The United Kingdom, which used to be in the "open" category is now in the "less restricted" category and we have a myriad of countries within the European Union that have gone through a solid deterioration of the freedom of expression.
Can you elaborate on the situation in France, Germany and the UK?
France ranks 19th globally. We would expect France to perform higher. But [Paris issued] pre-emptive bans on pro-Palestine protests in Paris, Lyon and Alençon. We saw how journalists, politicians, human rights defenders, trade union representatives, academics, medical practitioners were victims of gross misuse of counter-terrorism legislation, where they were investigated under the [guise of] terrorism. Those details do matter, because in Western Europe, it's clearly not going well.
Germany is the seventh top decliner last year – they have gone from scoring 91 out of 100, down to 85. We see this trend also in Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Romania and other countries. In the UK, there's legislation against the right to protest.
Are there any countries which have seen notable improvements to freedom of expression in 2025? And what factors have contributed to that?
Brazil – we saw the country going through [the leadership of] Jair Bolsonaro, and then the return of Lula turned that [country's status] from "restricted" to "open". It's not the fact that Lula came back to power, it's what he does in terms of policies, legislation and reinforcing the checks and balances that has turned Brazil back into an open country.
There's about two thirds of the population in the world, that has experienced a decline in freedom of expression.
REMARKS by David Diaz-Jogeix of Article 19
We've seen the same pattern in Poland, where the return of a more pro-democratic government has turned the country back into an "open" country. [Although we note] that the recent election of a new [conservative] president might reverse that pattern.
Guatemala is one of the global advancers, with a government that has led policies to reinforce the rule of law, stop the attacks against journalists, strengthen respect of minorities and come up with policies that create the right environment for freedom of expression.
What specific role do governments, but also tech companies and civil society, play in either advancing or restricting freedom of expression worldwide?
A big role. Governments regulating social media, in terms of the human rights and freedom of expression framework, clearly puts limits on freedom of expression, but those have a very high threshold.
There are the EU Digital Markets Act and the Digital Service Act – a very good way to try to keep a balance between allowing Big Tech to operate, [while] making sure that different views of society can go out without facing censorship.
How do you respond to critics from the extreme ends of the political spectrum, for instance the US Make America Great Again pro-Trump activists, who argue that combating hate speech or disinformation conflicts with promoting freedom of expression?
There are very clear standards for freedom of expression and its limits, how to combat hate speech and speech that incites violence, discrimination and marginalisation.
Your report refers to the chilling impact of surveillance and censorship. Can you elaborate on how these mechanisms are evolving?
For that we want to look at China or India, where you have highly repressive models in which the state is actually controlling how Big Tech and social media platforms are operating, in order to then be able to control not only the content but also access to the data of millions of people, which infringes the right to privacy.
Our [2024] report, the Digital Silk Road, explains how China exports their telecomms infrastructure into [third] countries, as it is relatively cheap [to do so] and very appealing to the receiving country to accept China's offer.
But it is not only the creation of the infrastructure, but [the fact that it] comes with a request to [amend local] legislation that would allow China to access all the private data, while pushing for pro-China narratives and legislation that borders on the authoritarian spectrum of these laws.
Countries such as Pakistan are under massive influence from China, to where they export these technologies – AI, facial recognition – really infringing on the right to privacy of so many citizens beyond China.
