13 January (BNS) - The New York-based Freedom House once again ranked Estonia among free countries in its fresh annual survey of political rights and civil liberties, Freedom in the World 2011.

Just like last year, Estonia's political rights score and civil liberties score were both 1. The same scores were given to most members of the European Union.

Latvia meanwhile received two points for political rights and one for civil liberties. Lithuania's scores were the same as Estonia's.

Freedom House gave countries from one to seven points in these two categories, with the countries seen as offering the greatest freedoms to their residents getting one point.

Russia's political rights score was 6 and civil liberties score 5, putting it in the Not Free category.

The number of countries ranked in the 2010 survey was 194 and of them 89 countries were designated as Free, representing 46% of the world population.

The number of Partly Free countries was 58, representing 20% of global population, while the number of Not Free countries was 47, comprising 34% of the world's total population.

According to Freedom House the level of democracy suffered a setback last
year in 25 countries worldwide, including in three EU member states -- Latvia, France and Hungary.

(ER)

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