The results for country rankings on the Political Terror Scale (PTS), an internationally regarded coding scale for human rights violations compiled at the University of North Carolina Asheville, are now out. With 2020 shaping up to be one of the most tumultuous years on record to affect the global population, there have been some fascinating shifts with esteemed countries slipping in status, while other countries, long considered near purgatory-level, have positively improved.
Just a few months ago, Canada was securely coded at Level 1 – the best score available on PTS’s 5-level “terror scale.” Level 1 populations experience “a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional. Political murders are extremely rare.” In 2020, reports showed that Canada slipped in status and no longer enjoys a perfect ranking. Interestingly, they are not alone. A handful of European countries and Australia are among additional countries that have slid in status as well.
Mark Gibney, the Belk Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina Asheville, and one of the reports architects remarks, “I was expecting to see a fair amount of discussion relating to COVID but, surprisingly, this was not the case. Instead, it seems as if there were simply higher incidents of excessive force, beatings, and torture in those states. In some cases (i.e., Australia and Canada), the targets were indigenous folks, but this was not the case in other countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, and Portugal). I guess what we are seeing is simply a “harder edge” as more and more states seem to be engaged in the kinds of practices that American police officers are increasingly being accused of. One noteworthy thing is that the BLM movement in the U.S. seems to have played a role in both Canada and Australia in terms of the government’s treatment of indigenous populations.”
For this year’s report, UNC Asheville students and researchers coded human rights conditions in 196 countries and territories. 56 countries or territories received a score of 1 (down eight from 64 in 2019); 48 countries or territories received a score of 2 (up six from 42 in 2019); 48 countries or territories received a score of 3 (down one from 49 in 2019); 29 countries or territories received a score of 4 (up three from 26 in 2019); and,15 countries or territories received a score of 5 as the worst human rights offenders (this number stayed equal to reports from 2019).
Still, not all the report’s findings were negative; human rights conditions improved in 2020 in 12 countries, including Iraq, Jordan, Mali, Rwanda, Sudan, and Thailand.
The 2020 Political Terror Scale is an unbiased report derived from the conglomeration of multiple reporting systems. It is compiled by meticulous documentation and measuring reports provided by the 2020 Amnesty International Country Reports; the 2020 Human Rights Watch World Report 2020; the 2020 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices; and U.S. State Department reports that had not previously been coded.
The PTS was established in the early 1980s at Purdue University to test whether U.S. foreign aid was being sent to countries that violated international human rights standards. In 1984, Gibney began directing the project and has remained in this capacity ever since. He receives direct support from PTS’s principal researcher Peter Haschke, associate professor of political science at UNC Asheville.
As new states are created, the PTS has grown accordingly and has expanded to cover the entire world. Human rights scholars have used the PTS in many ways, including analyzing whether recipients of U.S. foreign policy respect human rights as required by domestic (U.S.) law, whether there is any evidence of “asylum abuse,” and so on.
For more information on the Political Terror Scale or to view the 2021 PTS release, which includes scores covering events of 2020 as well as scores for previously uncoded reports, visit http://www.politicalterrorscale.org/.
Share
Permalink: