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Early implementation of expert recommendations, the deployment of masks and other protective equipment, and efficient contact-tracing and testing efforts that prioritized transparency—combined with the country’s island geography—all helped to control the disease. Meanwhile, Beijing escalated its campaign to sway global opinion against Taiwan’s government and deny the success of its democracy, in part by successfully pressuring the World Health Organization to ignore early warnings of human-to-human transmission from Taiwan and to exclude Taiwan from its World Health Assembly. Even before the virus struck, Taiwanese voters defied a multipronged, politicized disinformation campaign from China and overwhelmingly reelected incumbent president Tsai Ing-wen, who opposes moves toward unification with the mainland. In fact, Belarus was far from the only place where the promise of increased freedom raised by mass protests eventually curdled into heightened repression. Of the 39 countries and territories where Freedom House noted major protests in 2019, 23 experienced a score decline for 2020—a significantly higher share than countries with declines represented in the world at large. In settings as varied as Algeria, Guinea, and India, regimes that protests had taken by surprise in 2019 regained their footing, arresting and prosecuting demonstrators, passing newly restrictive laws, and in some cases resorting to brutal crackdowns, for which they faced few international repercussions.
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Defending Latin American Human Rights and Democracy Activists
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Its efforts also featured increased meddling in the domestic political discourse of foreign democracies, transnational extensions of rights abuses common in mainland China, and the demolition of Hong Kong’s liberties and legal autonomy. The Trump administration in 2020 intensified its efforts to reduce the number of legal immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants entering and residing in the country. Such moves since 2017 had in many cases been hasty, uncoordinated, and underfunded, leading to implementation problems as well as conflicts with existing laws, constitutional protections, and international human rights standards. While the administration typically cited exaggerated security concerns as justification for its policies, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a new rationale and helped the administration achieve larger declines in the number of newly arriving immigrants and asylum claimants than had previously been possible. Prior to the 2020 edition, Freedom in the World assigned a country or territory two ratings—one for political rights and one for civil liberties—based on its total scores for the political rights and civil liberties questions.
Substance Abuse Comprehensive Outpatient Treatment (SACOT)
It is more goal-oriented than traditional psychotherapy, as MI counselors directly attempt to get clients to consider making behavioral change (rather than wait for them to come to conclusions themselves). Its primary purpose is to resolve ambivalence and help clients become able to make healthy choices freely. Hypnotherapy (aka guided hypnosis) can be used as a therapeutic modality to treat substance use, especially in terms of quitting smoking cigarettes (nicotine). Clinical hypnotherapists help clients turn their attention inward, accessing unconscious or subconscious material, and then make suggestions that are healthier for the individual. The process can help clients make deep, positive, and lasting changes, including ceasing addictive habits. Fitness therapy blends exercise with psychotherapy for a fun, inspiring, and effective way of treating addiction and other issues.
Sudan: One Year into Conflict, Freedom House Urges United Action to End Violence and Aid Democratic Transition
The use of military force by authoritarian states, another symptom of the global decay of democratic norms, was on display in Nagorno-Karabakh last year. New fighting erupted in September when the Azerbaijani regime, with decisive support from Turkey, launched an offensive to settle a territorial dispute that years of diplomacy with Armenia had failed to resolve. At least 6,500 combatants and hundreds of civilians were killed, and tens of thousands of people were newly displaced. Meaningful international engagement was absent, and the war only stopped when Moscow imposed a peacekeeping plan on the two sides, fixing in place the Azerbaijani military’s territorial gains but leaving many other questions unanswered. The widespread protest movements of 2019, which had signaled the popular desire for good governance the world over, often collided with increased repression in 2020. While successful protests in countries such as Chile and Sudan led to democratic improvements, there were many more examples in which demonstrators succumbed to crackdowns, with oppressive regimes benefiting from a distracted and divided international community.
Our History: Founded in 1941 to Defend Democracy Worldwide
Meanwhile, restrictions on freedoms of expression and association have worsened over time, pushing the country’s scores deeper into the Partly Free range. The outbreak exposed weaknesses across all the pillars of democracy, from elections and the rule of law to egregiously disproportionate restrictions on freedoms of assembly and movement. Both democracies and dictatorships experienced successes and failures in their battle with the virus itself, though citizens in authoritarian states had fewer tools to resist and correct harmful policies. Ultimately, the changes precipitated by the pandemic left many societies—with varied regime types, income levels, and demographics—in worse political condition; with more pronounced racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities; and vulnerable to long-term effects. The malign influence of the regime in China, the world’s most populous dictatorship, was especially profound in 2020. Beijing ramped up its global disinformation and censorship campaign to counter the fallout from its cover-up of the initial coronavirus outbreak, which severely hampered a rapid global response in the pandemic’s early days.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), faced with the danger that its authoritarian system would be blamed for covering up and thus exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic, worked hard to convert the risk into an opportunity to exert influence. It provided medical supplies to countries that were hit hard by the virus, but it often portrayed sales as donations and orchestrated propaganda events with economically dependent recipient governments. Beijing sometimes sought to shift blame to the very countries it claimed to be helping, as when Chinese state media suggested that the coronavirus had actually originated in Italy. Throughout the year, the CCP touted its own authoritarian methods for controlling the contagion, comparing them favorably with democracies like the United States while studiously ignoring the countries that succeeded without resorting to major abuses, most notably Taiwan. This type of spin has the potential to convince many people that China’s censorship and repression are a recipe for effective governance rather than blunt tools for entrenching political power.
Turnout was the highest recorded in more than a century, with roughly two-thirds of the eligible population casting a ballot. Freedomhouse Bible College is a 3 year college program, where we are teaching minds and training hearts. We believe in order to raise up people after the Heart of God, we must create an environment, and atmosphere that encourages growth in the knowledge of God, but more importantly, in knowing the Heart of God. Recreational therapy (aka therapeutic recreation) uses creative and fun activities to help with addiction recovery. Recreational therapists lead patients in entertaining and engaging activities like sports or games; art (drawing, painting, sculpture); drama, music, and dance; and/or community outings (field trips) to improve patients' physical, social, and emotional well-being. Participants commute to receive treatment such as medication management, 12 Step support, and creative arts therapy.
State Licenses are permits issued by government agencies that allow rehab organizations to conduct business legally within a certain geographical area. Typically, the kind of program a rehab facility offers, along with its physical location, determines which licenses are required to operate legally. With programs in nearly 20 countries, Freedom House offers opportunities to grow within the organization, and to learn from the diverse experience of our domestic and international staff. In response to the death of Russian democratic opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, who died in Russian custody while unjustly incarcerated, Freedom House joins partners in requesting the Biden Administration to accelerate efforts to free imprisoned Russian democracy advocate, Vladimir Kara-Murza.
How Civic Mobilizations Grow in Authoritarian Contexts
The end product represents the consensus of the analysts, outside advisers, and Freedom House staff, who are responsible for any final decisions. Although an element of subjectivity is unavoidable in such an enterprise, the ratings process emphasizes methodological consistency, intellectual rigor, and balanced and unbiased judgments. More broadly, democracy has demonstrated its adaptability under the unique constraints of a world afflicted by COVID-19. A number of successful elections were held across all regions and in countries at all income levels, including in Montenegro, and in Bolivia, yielding improvements.
The Trump administration and its political allies frequently denounced the BLM movement and offered unqualified support to police, downplaying the extent of police violence. The president threatened to deploy active-duty military units in cities experiencing unrest, and in June a combination of federal law enforcement agents and National Guard members used chemical irritants and physical force to clear peaceful protesters from a plaza adjacent to the White House. The United States was the first country to adopt a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) over 50 years ago, and the law is actively used by journalists, civil society groups, researchers, and members of the public. A 2016 reform law was designed to improve government agencies’ responsiveness to FOIA requests, and reporters and activists were able to use FOIA filings to obtain important documents on the Trump administration that congressional investigators could not access through normal oversight requests or subpoenas.
Democracy’s advocates need to learn from the experience of 2020 and prepare for emergency responses that respect the political rights and civil liberties of all people, including the most marginalized. Multiple military figures were appointed to leading positions on the country’s COVID-19 task force, and the armed services provided essential support in developing emergency hospitals and securing medical supplies. In recent years, observers have raised concerns about the military’s growing influence over civilian governance, and its heavy involvement in the health crisis threatened to accelerate this trend.
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