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Freedom House is a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. and with field offices in about a dozen countries.

As stated by Freedom House:

"Freedom House is an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world. Freedom is possible only in democratic political systems in which the governments are accountable to their own people; the rule of law prevails; and freedoms of expression, association, belief and respect for the rights of minorities and women are guaranteed."

"Freedom ultimately depends on the actions of committed and courageous men and women. We support nonviolent civic initiatives in societies where freedom is denied or under threat and we stand in opposition to ideas and forces that challenge the right of all people to be free. Freedom House functions as a catalyst for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law through its analysis, advocacy, and action."^[2]

The organization was founded by Wendell Willkie, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Field, Dorothy Thompson, Herbert Bayard Swope, and others in 1941. Originally launched in response to the threat posed by Nazism, it now describes itself as a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world. Freedom House states that it:

"has vigorously opposed dictatorships in Central America and Chile, apartheid in South Africa, the suppression of the Prague Spring, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the brutal violation of human rights in Cuba, Burma, the People's Republic of China, and Iraq. It has championed the rights of democratic activists, religious believers, trade unionists, journalists, and proponents of free markets."

It states that during the 1940s, Freedom House supported the Marshall Plan and the establishment of NATO. Freedom House also states that it was highly critical of McCarthyism.^[3] During the 1950s and 1960s, it supported the U.S. civil rights movement and its leadership included several prominent Civil Rights activists. It supported Andrei Sakharov, other Soviet dissidents, and the Solidarity movement in Poland. Freedom House assisted the post-Communist societies in the establishment of independent media, non-governmental think tanks, and the core institutions of electoral politics.^[4]

More recently, it supported citizens involved in revolutions in Serbia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. It states that "In Jordan, Freedom House worked to stem violence against women; in Algeria, it sought justice for victims of torture; in Uzbekistan, a brutal dictatorship, it sought to defend human rights advocates; in Venezuela, it worked with those seeking to protect and promote human rights in a difficult political environment."^[5]

Freedom House is a nonprofit organization. It is predominantly funded by the United States government^[6], and is headquartered in Washington, D.C., It has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and a number of countries in Central Asia.

It is controlled by a Board of Trustees, which it describes as composed of 'business and labor leaders, former senior government officials, scholars, writers, and journalists'. While some board members were born outside the United States, and many have been affiliated with international groups, all are current residents of the United States. It does not identify itself with either of the American Republican or the Democratic parties. The board is currently chaired by Peter Ackerman. Ackerman took over chairmanship of the board in September of 2005 from former CIA director James Woolsey. Other notable board members included Steve Forbes, Samuel Huntington, Azar Nafisi, Farooq Kathwari, P. J. O'Rourke, Mara Liasson, and Mark Palmer, Kenneth Adelman, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Otto Reich, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Malcolm Forbes Jr..

Freedom House is funded by a number of foundations, including Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Soros Foundation. It also receives funding from the US Government through the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the State Department.^[7] Around 75% of its income is US federal grants.^[6]

Freedom House describes its relationship with the US government as follows: "Freedom House is an independent, non-governmental organization that was initially created in 1941 to urge the U.S. government to adopt policies supporting democracy and human rights at home and abroad. Its reports and analyses are independent of any governmental influence and are enriched by an intellectual atmosphere of scholarly inquiry. In recent years, Freedom House has received grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department for various projects, usually as a result of public competition. Freedom House has also applied for and received funds from other democratic governments and international bodies that promote democracy, including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway and the European Union. Freedom House chooses to respond to specific funding opportunities, but never accepts funds from government institutions, including U.S. government agencies, in the form of contracts, and never functions as an extension of any government."^[8]

This map reflects the findings of Freedom House's 2007 survey Freedom in the World, concerning the state of world freedom in 2006.      Free      Partly Free      Not Free

This graph shows the number of nations in the different categories given above for the period for which there are surveys, 1972-2005

Countries highlighted in blue are designated "Electoral Democracies" in Freedom House's 2006 survey Freedom in the World.

See also: Freedom in the World

Since 1973, Freedom House publishes an annual report, Freedom in the World, on the degree of democratic freedoms in nations and significant disputed territories around the world, by which it seeks to assess^[9] the current state of civil and political rights on a scale from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free). These reports are often^[10] used by political scientists when doing research. The ranking is highly correlated with several other ratings of democracy also frequently used by researchers.^[9]

In its 2003 report, for example, Canada (judged as fully free and democratic) got a perfect score of a "1" in civil liberties and a "1" in political rights, earning it the designation of "free." Nigeria got a "5" and a "4", earning it the designation of "partly free," while North Korea scored the lowest rank of "7-7", and was thus dubbed "not free." Nations are scored from 0 to 4 on several questions and the sum determines the rankings. Example questions: "Is the head of state and/or head of government or other chief authority elected through free and fair elections?", "Is there an independent judiciary?", "Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations?" ^[11] Freedom House states that the rights and liberties of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.^[12]

Freedom House also produces annual reports on press freedom (Press Freedom Survey), governance in the nations of the former Soviet Union (Nations in Transit), and countries on the borderline of democracy (Countries at the Crossroads). In addition, one-time reports have included a survey of women's freedoms in the Middle East.

Freedom House generally uses standard geographic regions for its reports, though it groups the countries of the Middle East and North Africa together, separately from Sub-Saharan Africa; and it still uses the arguably outdated concept of Western Europe, to include countries such as Turkey and Cyprus, while categorizing Central and Eastern Europe separately -- a division stemming from the Cold War era which ignores the eastwards expansion of such organizations such the EU and NATO. However, these groupings have nothing to do with the individual country ratings; they're merely used to make nations easier to find when perusing their reports, and also for comparative statistics between the modern day and the ratings of decades past.

In addition to these reports, Freedom House participates in advocacy initiatives, currently focused on North Korea, Africa, and religious freedom. It has offices in a number of countries, where it promotes and assists local human rights workers and non-government organizations.

On January 12, 2006, as part of a crackdown on unauthorized nongovernmental organizations, the Uzbek government ordered Freedom House to suspend operations in Uzbekistan. Resource and Information Centers managed by Freedom House in Tashkent, Namangan, and Samarkand offered access to materials and books on human rights, as well as technical equipment, such as computers, copiers and Internet access. The government warned that criminal proceedings could be brought against Uzbek staff members and visitors following recent amendments to the criminal code and Code on Administrative Liability of Uzbekistan. Other human rights groups have been similarly threatened and obliged to suspend operations.

The Financial Times has reported that Freedom House is one of several organisations selected by the State Department to receive funding for 'clandestine activities' inside Iran.^[13] In a research study, with Mr Ackerman acting as chief adviser, Freedom House sets out its conclusions: "Far more often than is generally understood, the change agent is broad-based, non-violent civic resistance - which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil disobedience to de-legitimate authoritarian rulers and erode their sources of support, including the loyalty of their armed defenders."^[14]

Freedom House is a member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, a global network of more than 70 non-governmental organisations that monitors free expression violations around the world and defends journalists, writers and others who are persecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Regarding regime change, the organization states "Freedom House works directly with men and women around the world to expand the political rights and civil liberties they experience in their countries. More specifically, Freedom House focuses on initiatives that contribute to long-term stability and growth in countries, such as strengthening civil society, promoting open government, defending human rights, and facilitating the free flow of information and ideas. While these activities - and the liberties they represent - may be threatening to some repressive governments, Freedom House does not initiate or sponsor regime change or popular revolutions. We help men and women of good will to improve their own societies."^[15]

Freedom House has been criticized by Justin Raimondo, who describes the organization: "Freedom House standards are elastic, bending to the dictates of American foreign policy.^[16]"

However, Freedom House reports have criticized both the United States and its major allies.^[17][18] It has been highly critical of some traditional US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Chile under Pinochet, classifying them as "Not Free".^[19] It was also strongly critical of apartheid South Africa and military dictatorships in Latin America. Its ratings are, despite some differences, highly correlated with several other ratings of democracy and widely used political science research.^[9] The organisation states that its board of trustees contains Democrats, Republicans and Independents who are a mix of business and labor leaders, former senior government officials, scholars and journalists.^[20]

Writing in National Review Online, John R. Miller, a research professor at the George Washington University’s Elliott School, claims that

Freedom House has unwaveringly raised the standard of freedom in evaluating fascist countries, Communist regimes, and plain old, dictatorial thugocracies. Its annual rankings are read and used in the United Nations and other international organizations, as well as by the U.S. State Department. Policy and aid decisions are influenced by Freedom House’s report. Those fighting for freedom in countries lacking it are encouraged or discouraged by what Freedom House’s report covers. And sometimes — most importantly — their governments are moved to greater effort."^[21]

Miller nevertheless criticized the organization in 2007 as not paying enough attention to slavery in its reports. Democracies such as Germany and India, but mostly repressive regimes, needed to be held to account for their lack of enforcement of laws against human trafficking and the bondage of some foreign workers, he wrote.^[21]

The website RightWeb claims that:

Several prominent members in 1990 were neoconservatives.^[22]

In the 1970s and 80s, Freedom House lobbied at UNESCO against the New World Information and Communications Order, an attempt by Third World countries to create media systems that weren't dominated by First World corporations and governments. During the 1980s, the organization began to receive a majority of its grant income from the newly created NED (founded by Congress in 1983), and contracts for Latin America far surpassed those for Eastern Europe.5 ^[23]

Under the Reagan-Bush administrations, Freedom House continued to promote the foreign policy objectives of the United States in Central America, "supporting the death squad-linked ARENA party in El Salvador while attacking the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, championing Contra leaders like Arturo Cruz, and serving as a conduit for funds from the National Endowment for Democracy."^[24]

The socialist magazine "Monthly review" claims that:

Considered "neoconservative" even at that time, the group's trustees and associates were affiliated with the State Department, the National Security Council (Jeane Kirkpatrick), the CIA (through front groups), the U.S. Information Agency, the Trilateral Commission (Zbigniew Brzezinski), the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Committee on the Present Danger, Accuracy in Media, the American Enterprise Institute, Crisis, The New Republic and PRODEMCA, a group that raised funds and lobbied for the Contras. During the 1980s, Freedom House also formed the Afghanistan Information Center, one of several NED-funded groups supporting the mujahedin. This was to complement the government's US $3,000 million covert funding program for the anti-Soviet groups.^[25]

According to Freedom House's IRS Form 990, prior to 1997 its government funding was in the form of "government fees and contracts," presumably for work performed on behalf of the State Department. After that year, however, the funding was qualified as "grants." But with neoconservatives such as Kenneth Adelman, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Otto Reich, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Malcolm Forbes Jr.. on the board of trustees, there was no danger the organization would change its ideological course.^[26][27]

• Human Development Index
• List of Indices of Freedom
• Human rights
• Negative rights
• Cultural relativism
• United States government

• Freedom House
• Freedom House:when “freedom” is only a pretext, Voltaire Network, September 2004
• What is "good" press freedom? The difficulty of measuring freedom of the press worldwide (PDF), Christina Holtz-Bacha, 2004.

• Freedom House Publications
• 2006 essay and survey data
• Annual Report 2005
• Annual Report 2004
• Annual Report 2003
• Annual Report 2002
• Annual Report 2001