Representation

The establishment of a Provisional Electoral Council in Haiti was a potentially positive step toward elections in a context of sustained breakdown in institutions. However, changes in the membership of the Transitional Presidential Council lessened stability amidst the security crisis marked by severe gang violence and a devastating humanitarian situation.

Elsewhere, events affecting Representation were mixed. In Bolivia, the Legislature was able to come to a decision to set a date for overdue judicial elections, following a year-long standstill, enabling the partial replacement of judicial office-holders in December. In Canada, a Conservative party filibuster of an own motion related to a question of privilege halted the business of the House of Commons. In Argentina, parliamentary oversight of executive power has waned with the approval of the “Ley Bases”, that granted the president special powers to legislate by decree on certain matters, allowing him to bypass ordinary congressional procedures.

Rights

Improvements in Access to Justice have been encouraging, though the region experienced some setbacks as well. Brazil improved access to truth and transitional justice by restoring the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, and recognizing previously unacknowledged groups as victims of the military dictatorship. A conviction in the murder of prominent councilwoman Marielle Franco, and an agreement with the mining company responsible for a catastrophic dam breach in 2015 that resulted in deaths, displacements and environmental damage to ensure reparations to victims, are further signals of progress. In Canada, a Supreme Court ruling that ordered compensation for longstanding underpayments of treaty-obligated annuities to Anishinaabe First Nations was a step towards accountability for violations of Indigenous rights. Rulings by domestic and international courts have also reaffirmed states’ responsibility to ensure the rights of Indigenous and ethnic minorities in Colombia and Ecuador.

In Peru, notable developments include a UN treaty body’s recommendation that the government make reparations for forced sterilizations that particularly impacted rural and Indigenous women in the 1990s. However, tensions have emerged in the country between the courts and parliament regarding how to address historic crimes, with a judge disapplying a statute of limitations recently approved by Congress due to its incompatibility with Peruvian and international law.

Another setback for Access to Justice took place in Mexico, where a ‘constitutional supremacy’ amendment banned any judicial review of constitutional changes, limiting people’s ability to defend their rights in courts.

Weakened Freedom of Expression has been a recent feature in some countries such as Argentina, where changes to legislation have imposed burdensome requirements for information access requests, and Mexico, where Congress passed constitutional amendments to abolish autonomous bodies, including a freedom of information watchdog. Freedom of Expression further deteriorated in Venezuela, where legislation to criminalize support of international sanctions was passed, and in Nicaragua, a country where vague legislation was enacted to criminalize critical speech in social media.

Finally, immigration policy has tightened in the Dominican Republic and in Chile, with a detrimental effect on Social Group Equality. However, the latter government has also announced that it is studying a plan to regularize undocumented immigrants.

Rule of Law

The weakening of accountability and checks on government was a notable trend in this period. In the United States, a Supreme Court ruling that former presidents enjoy broad immunity has diluted equality in legal accountability. In Mexico, despite experts’ warnings of its negative impact to judicial independence, the entry into force of a controversial reform to the judiciary that will introduce popular elections for all judgeships, has upended the justice system.

Personal Integrity and Security remains a challenge. In the United States, now-President Donald Trump was the target of two attempted assassinations. In Bolivia, former president Evo Morales was involved in a violent encounter in which his vehicle was attacked with gunfire. A longstanding, broader downturn in security has led some leaders to enact harsher measures to combat crime and gang violence, as has been the case recently in Panama, Chile and Trinidad and Tobago.

Participation

In the second half of the 2024 election super-cycle, three countries went to the polls: Venezuela, Uruguay and the United States. The average voter turnout was approximately 70.8 per cent (Uruguay has compulsory voting). In the United States and Uruguay, where legislative elections took place, the average female representation in the lower house slightly improved. Both the US and Uruguayan elections resulted in party turnover. The election in Venezuela was decried for its lack of transparency and credibility, with some domestic and international observers describing it as fraudulent. Some countries and stakeholders have recognized the opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, as the elected president.

The repression of anti-Maduro protests, the closure of 1500 NGOs and the upcoming constitutional amendments that sanction ‘treason’ with the deprivation of nationality in Nicaragua, and the introduction of excessive and burdensome controls on NGOs in Paraguay are further examples of shrinking civic space in the region.

Representation

Concerns around the impact of foreign interference on the credibility of electoral processes were dominant, threatening trust in democratic institutions. Georgia’s President claimed the official results of the parliamentary elections were illegitimate, branding the election a Russian “special operation.” Moldova's government has accused Russia of using vote buying, disinformation and security threats to influence a narrow vote in a referendum on enshrining EU accession in the country’s Constitution. A shock result in Romania’s presidential election sparked an investigation by the European Commission into the role of TikTok, amid claims by Romanian security officials of cyberattacks and Russian attempts to influence the country’s social cohesion.  .  

There were 13 national elections in Europe over the past six months. Voter turnout was particularly notable in France’s parliamentary elections, where it increased to 66.6 per cent, up from 46.2 per cent in the 2022 elections, reflecting energy injected by a new generation of politicians, as well as by the prospect of the far-right coming to power. As Bulgaria held its seventh parliamentary election since 2021, and its second this year, voter turnout hovered around 38.9 per cent—a persistently low figure observers attributed to widespread distrust in the political leadership. Women’s representation in the legislature improved the most in the United Kingdom, from 34.8 per cent to 40.5 per cent. 

Rights

The category of Rights was by far the most impacted in Europe over the past six months. Negative developments outweighed positive ones, especially concerning Civil Liberties and Social Group Equality, as governments struggled to balance security concerns with respect for rights.

Freedom of Association and Assembly

Slovakia restricted the right to assembly as part of its “Lex Assassination,” which the ruling coalition claimed aims to enhance security following the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico. A security bill pending in Italy’s Parliament would criminalise peaceful protests such as road blockades, punishable with up to two years in prison. Events like these could stifle dissent and create a chilling environment for those who advocate for change.

Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Press   

Moldovan security services suspended access to several websites, justifying these restrictions with reference to national security and foreign interference. There were also cases of restrictions on access to the Internet and social media platforms, often with little transparency around its justifications. Türkiye imposed a ban on Instagram without an official explanation or a court order. Russia blocked access to the messaging app Discord, following earlier bans on YouTube (subsequently restored in November) and Signal. In Albania, the Prime Minister announced a one-year ban on TikTok, after the platform was used to incite the murder of a 14-year-old boy.

Political Equality

There has been limited progress in the second half of the year with regard to political equality, particularly gender equality and LGBTQIA+ rights, aside from encouraging cases such as new guidelines aiming to ease abortion procedures in Poland and record women’s representation in ministerial roles in Armenia.

In terms of LGBTQIA+ rights, a ruling by the European Court of Justice found that Romania violated the rights of a British-Romanian citizen when authorities failed to recognize a change to their legal gender effected in the UK, setting an important precedent. The Constitutional Court in Lithuania annulled parts of a law that restricted the spread of LGBTQIA+ content for minors. However, a broad range of LGBTQIA+ rights were restricted, including in Bulgaria and in Georgia. Italy criminalised pursuing surrogacy abroad, particularly affecting LGBTQIA+ communities, who are already excluded from adoption and other infertility treatments. 

Social Group Equality

Issues of inequality were clear in the lack of protection for vulnerable populations, including migrants and asylum seekers.  In Italy, the death of a migrant farm worker exposed the exploitation of immigrant labour. In Poland, the government decriminalised the use of weapons in border management. In Portugal, a police officer fatally shot a man, originally from Cabo Verde, leading thousands to protest police violence, particularly against people of African descent. Riots targeting migrants and ethnic minorities erupted in the United Kingdom following disinformation about the identity of the perpetrator of a knife attack at a children’s dance class. This was also an issue in lower-performing contexts, including in Russia, where Central Asians were targeted, and in Türkiye where Syrians faced hostility. Discrimination and violence against marginalized groups risks further deepening inequalities and divisions, limiting equal participation in political and civic life.

Yet courts have acted as valuable accountability mechanisms. A landmark ruling by the Irish High Court found the government failed to meet asylum seekers’ basic needs, amid issues with homelessness and rising hostility against asylum seekers. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Cyprus violated human rights when it intercepted two Syrian migrants at sea and immediately returned them to Lebanon. Italy’s government and judiciary were embroiled in a dispute over a deal to set up migration detention centres in Albania—the outcome could influence not only these two countries but also the approach to migrant policies in other countries that have expressed interest in this model.

Rule of Law

In several countries, key anti-corruption institutions were weakened, threatening to enable impunity, diminishing trust in institutions and reducing accountability. In Slovakia, the Constitutional Court upheld controversial parts of penal code reform, including the abolition of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, which handled cases of organized crime, corruption and extremism, and the government also disbanded the National Crime Agency, tasked with investigating corruption. The Supreme Court in Cyprus ruled in favour of the dismissal of the Auditor-General, leading thousands of people to protest corruption. In Ukraine, the Prosecutor General resigned following revelations that dozens of prosecutors and other civil servants were falsely classified as “disabled” to avoid military conscription. 

However, there were also promising cases, including in Poland, where the former ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS) was held accountable for campaign financing violation, and in Albania, where organized crime and high-level corruption are taking a hit.

Participation

The most impacted factor of Participation has been Civil Society, with negative impacts seen particularly in low-performing countries. Azerbaijan saw an escalating crackdown on civil society in the run-up to both its September parliamentary election and the United Nations Climate Change Conference (which it hosted). For the first time since the early 2000s, more than 300 political prisoners are Azerbaijani human rights activists. Russian legislation now classifies any Russian entity founded or funded by a foreign government as an “undesirable organization.” 

Most positive developments have impacted Civic Engagement, from mass protests against lithium-mining in Serbia to demonstrations in Georgia after the government decided to pause the country’s EU accession. 

Representation

Restrictions on political party freedoms remained one of the starkest trends during the second half of 2024. Of these, attacks on the personal integrity and security of opposition members and supporters were the most widely reported, including in Eswatini, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.  

Blanket bans on political parties continued to be a live issue, with Guinea dissolving and suspending over one hundred parties. There were, however, positive developments in Mali, where the junta lifted a suspension on political parties and associations, and in Gabon, where proposals for a similar measure were omitted from the country’s new constitution.  

Rights

Armed conflicts in Africa and West Asia continued to negatively impact rights. Intensified fighting in Palestine and Sudan left millions without access to basic necessities.  

In Palestine, freedom of the press was undermined by the Israeli military’s shuttering of the Ramallah offices of Al Jazeera, one of the few international media outlets reporting from Gaza. Media freedoms have also been curtailed in Tanzania, where a major newspaper publisher was suspended, in Chad and Cameroon, which imposed stringent new reporting restrictions, and in Burkina Faso, where several journalists disappeared in a spate of suspected state abductions. Concerns were further raised by the launch of a joint media platform by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, where the juntas are attempting to strengthen state-controlled information and counter critical international reporting.     

Another area of concern is LGBTQIA+ rights, with draft legislation in Mali and Burkina Faso poised to criminalize homosexuality and a growth in anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric and violence in Côte d’Ivoire.

There have been several positive developments concerning access to justice for historical crimes. In Guinea and Uganda, convictions for crimes against humanity were secured in domestic courts for atrocities committed by former Guinean President Moussa Dadis Camara and rebel commander Thomas Kwoyelo, respectively. ECOWAS approved the establishment of a Special Tribunal for The Gambia to prosecute crimes committed under former President Yahya Jammeh’s rule and, in Zimbabwe, President Mnangagwa launched community hearings over the ‘Gukurahundi’ massacres carried out by the country’s military in the 1980s.   

Rule of Law

Armed conflict and insecurity have had a major impact on the rule of law, particularly personal integrity and security. In the Middle East, the spillover of the Gaza war to the West Bank and Lebanon has significantly increased the number of civilian casualties and led to several political assassinations, including that of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Civilian casualties also spiked in Sudan, with attacks carried out on displacement camps, villages and markets. Mali, Burkina Faso and Oman suffered major terrorist attacks on civilian targets in the second half of 2024. Reports of alleged torture in Israel and Lesotho, a country suffering from escalating gang violence, reflect the challenges of protecting human rights in contexts of conflict and insecurity.

Judicial independence also faced setbacks. These included allegations of undue executive interference in the courts in Burkina Faso, following the junta’s forced conscription of several magistrates, and in Zambia, where President Hakainde Hichilema dismissed three Constitutional Court judges who had previously ruled against him. Questions were also raised in Tunisia when, ahead of the country’s presidential election, the electoral commission repeatedly refused to comply with the Administrative Court’s order to reinstate three opposition candidates, and then again when the Court was subsequently stripped of its electoral dispute jurisdiction.  

Participation

There were 16 national elections in Africa and Western Asia in the second half of the 2024 election supercycle – six presidential and ten parliamentary. The average voter turnout was 60.3 per cent.  Tunisia’s presidential election saw a particularly low turnout of 28.8 per cent, but a majority of countries recorded higher participation, with Namibia reaching a two-decades high. In the countries that held parliamentary elections, average female representation in parliament increased from 27.5 to 28.9 per cent and Namibia’s Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was the only female president elected in the region (the first in Namibia’s history). Incumbent governments lost elections in Mauritius, Ghana and Botswana, which experienced its first transition of power since independence in 1966. Elections were postponed in South Sudan, Cameroon and Guinea-Bissau.

Beyond elections, civic engagement through protest remained significant. Kenya’s youth-led protests inspired similar mobilizations in other parts of Africa, most notably in Nigeria, where tens of thousands took to the streets across the country to demonstrate against rising costs of living. Elsewhere major protests erupted over a range of issues including elections (Mozambique, Ghana, Syria), illegal mining (Ghana), the abduction of activists (Guinea) and the assassination of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh (Palestine). Yet, in many contexts, protesters have had to contend with repressive policing, that in extreme instances, such as in Mozambique, Nigeria and Kenya left many dead, injured and forcibly disappeared. Civic space also shrank through restrictive legislation curtailing civil liberties, such as in that enacted in Angola, while in Ethiopia, 1,500 civil society organizations were shut down for failing to meet stringent reporting requirements.              

Representation

During the latter half of 2024, the primary trends in Representation were political upheaval and electoral reform in contexts like Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia, as well as restricted space for opposition political parties in Thailand and Pakistan. While public pressure and judicial intervention halted controversial electoral law changes in Indonesia that threatened opposition parties, the dissolution of the main opposition Move Forward Party in Thailand reflects a broader trend of lawfare being used to silence dissent. In Pakistan, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party continued to endure legal challenges brought on by the ruling coalition government.

In Bangladesh, a student-led uprising abruptly ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule, paving the way for an interim government overseeing state institution reforms and organizing new elections. Nepal saw its fourth change in the ruling coalition since the 2022 general election, with the new alliance foreshadowing its plans to amend the constitution and electoral system.

Yet even stable democracies faced turbulence in late 2024, with South Korea’s President briefly declaring martial law, which was swiftly overturned by parliament.

Elections

Four national elections took place in Asia and the Pacific in the second half of the election Supercycle year: three parliamentary (Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Japan) and one presidential (Sri Lanka). Voting age population turnout across the parliamentary elections averaged 62.8 per cent, down from an average of 63.9 per cent in the previous elections. Among those three elections, female representation increased from 16.9 to 21.1 per cent. Only in Sri Lanka did elections result in real incumbent turnover, where left-leaning candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake swept both presidential and snap parliamentary polls. Following political funding scandals, Japan’s snap parliamentary election delivered a rebuke to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which lost its majority but retained its position as the largest party in the House of Representatives.

Rights

Most events in this six-month period concerned Rights. Restrictions on Civil Liberties were marked by the repression of protests in contexts like Pakistan and Bangladesh, which in the latter case led up to Hasina’s departure. In Malaysia and Pakistan, efforts to regulate online content are increasingly being used as tools to restrict Freedom of Expression and control an open Internet. In contrast, Bangladesh took a positive step by deciding to repeal the controversial Cybersecurity Act.

The region also saw significant progress in accountability and reconciliation efforts; Nepal passed its long-awaited transitional justice law in August, while Thailand took the historic step to end statelessness and grant citizenship to nearly 500,000 people.

Women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights saw a mix of progress and setbacks. Afghanistan continued its crackdown on women’s autonomy in the public and private sphere, while Vanuatu banned same-sex marriage and announced its plans to draft a national policy banning LGBTQIA+ advocacy as well. To the contrary, Indonesia narrowly expanded abortion rights, New Zealand passed a divorce law protecting domestic abuse victims, and parliamentary elections in Japan and Sri Lanka boosted women’s representation in the legislature.

Rule of Law

Events coded as Rule of Law reflected both major political upheavals, primarily in South and Southeast Asia, and contestation over the authority of the judiciary. In Pakistan, the Supreme Court acted to ensure that Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party could take its allotment of reserved parliamentary seats and thus deny the government a supermajority, and later reinstated highly contested anti-corruption laws. In response, the nation’s parliament moved to exert more direct control over the Court, passing legislation allowing it to choose the next Chief Justice.

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court was also active in ruling to compel the government to hold much-delayed local elections (despite the Court’s intervention, local elections remain indefinitely delayed as of December 2024). Elsewhere, popular mobilization was necessary to ensure the judiciary and the legislature adhered to the rule of law – in Indonesia, a significant bottom-up movement against changes to the electoral system seen as unduly benefitting the ruling coalition and the family of outgoing President Joko Widodo led the parliament to swiftly backtrack.

Participation

As with the first half of the year, very few events were coded under Participation in the region. Those that were, however, reflected milestone events in the ability of mass civic participation to alter the course of national politics. In Bangladesh, the uprising which saw the end of Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen year rule spoke to the strength of local civil society and popular resilience despite years of democratic backsliding and police repression. As noted above under Rule of Law, Indonesia’s August nationwide protests showcased the ability of organized civil society and mass protests to prevent a government from straying too far outside of the agreed-upon limits to its discretion. Even in authoritarian Cambodia, simmering dissatisfaction on social media, dispersed local networks, and the Cambodian diaspora pressured the government into reversing an unpopular decades-old regional economic agreement.

Representation 

The last half of the global super-cycle election year was momentous, as national elections took centre-stage. The spectre of foreign interference, especially through the use of social media and new digital technology, loomed large across Europe. Perhaps most prominently, the shock result in Romania’s presidential election sparked an investigation by the European Commission into the role of TikTok and prompted the country’s Constitutional Court to annul the election results and order a re-run (to be held in May 2025).  

Other regions also saw controversy and some surprises. In Sri Lanka, left-leaning candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a leader of the Marxist JVP, swept both presidential and snap parliamentary polls. Bangladesh was also in the limelight as the 15-year rule of Sheikh Hasina came to an end amid mass protests that swept her out of power and ushered in a transitional government. Elections in Mozambique and Venezuela were controversial, with significant evidence of an opposition victory in the latter case despite official results showing otherwise. 

In many other places, however, opposition political parties were suppressed, including in multiple countries in Africa. Most notably, over one hundred parties were dissolved or suspended in Guinea. Similar problems were seen in Pakistan and Thailand. In contrast, Malian leaders lifted a ban on parties and large-scale Indonesian protests and civil society opposition thwarted a legal reform that would have threatened opposition parties. In the Americas especially, weakened checks on the executive raise questions about an uneven balance of power.  

Rights 

In contrast to ongoing repression of a range of civil liberties in all regions, it is encouraging to note recent victories related to historical crimes. There was progress in this regard across Africa, including in Guinea and Uganda. ECOWAS approved the establishment of a Special Tribunal for The Gambia to prosecute crimes committed under former President Yahya Jammeh’s rule, and Zimbabwe launched community hearings over the ‘Gukurahundi’ massacres carried out by the country’s military in the 1980s. Similarly, a UN treaty body recommended that the government in Peru make reparations for forced sterilizations that particularly impacted rural and Indigenous women in the 1990s. Advances in Brazil included the restoration of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances and recognizing previously unacknowledged groups as victims of the military dictatorship. 

On the other hand, already vulnerable groups still bear the brunt of oppression, with attacks against migrants and ethnic minorities in places such as Türkiye and the United Kingdom, undermining Political Equality. State violence has also impacted minority groups in other regions (See Rule of Law below). On the other hand, reforms in Thailand opened the door for permanent residency and citizenship for close to 500,000 stateless individuals, and judicial rulings in Ireland and with regard to Cyprus provide support for the fight against inequality. 

A turnaround in the longstanding trend of declining respect for Freedoms of Expression, Association and Assembly and the Press seems increasingly unlikely, especially as states turn their attention to security and argue in many cases that increased attention to security necessitates and justifies less respect for rights. The launch of a joint media platform by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, where the juntas are attempting to strengthen state-controlled information and counter critical international reporting, is particularly worrying. Similarly, in Palestine, Freedom of the Press was undermined by the Israeli military’s shuttering of the Ramallah offices of Al Jazeera, one of the few international media outlets reporting from Gaza. 

Declines in Gender and Social Group Equality, with particular impacts on the LGBTQIA+ community, marred democratization around the world, including in Vanuatu, Georgia, Bulgaria, Italy and Burkina Faso. Still, women’s reproductive rights and protections against child marriage and domestic violence were expanded, including in Colombia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Poland. Women’s political representation also saw historic gains in Armenia, Jordan and Namibia. 

Rule of Law 

Violence continues to undermine people’s safety around the world, with concerning developments in every region. In the Americas, Panama, Chile and Trinidad and Tobago have struggled to balance respect for rights and controlling gang violence and crime, while confirmed and alleged assassination attempts marred the US presidential campaign and the political context in Bolivia. In Africa and Western Asia, on the other hand, violence continues to manifest in the form of terrorist attacks, insurgencies and war.  

Although not violent, there are also battles between the courts and other branches of government. In Burkina Faso, Zambia and Tunisia, executives have made moves to shape and influence the courts in their favour, while in Slovakia and Cyprus, key investigation institutions were disbanded. On the other hand, courts, including in Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Pakistan were able to assert their independence in cases ranging from social media companies’ violation of the law to the appointment of key judicial officials. In Mexico and the United States, the introduction of elections for judges and a ruling in favor of broad presidential immunity, respectively, have raised several questions about institutional independence and accountability.  

Perhaps the most dramatic development, however, has been in the Republic of Korea, where the president’s declaration of martial law sparked impeachments as well as the arrest of the now former president and other actors.  

Participation 

In the latter half of 2024, 35 countries held national elections across all regions. There were several historic cases of party turnover, including in (but not limited to) Botswana, Sri Lanka and the United States. In Bangladesh and Syria, milestone transitions of power took place outside the context of elections, while highly contentious polls marked Georgia, Mozambique, Romania and Venezuela. In fact, 2024 saw losers rejecting election outcomes in 15 per cent of cases. 

While a majority of registered voters turned out (61.0 per cent), representing more than 1.6 billion voters in 2024, there was not necessarily evidence of more expansive inclusion. The average percentage of women in legislatures increased by less than one per cent, and the number of female heads of state stands at nine (although this is more than the 6sixwho were in power at the beginning of 2024). Europe’s first black head of government, Vaughn Gething in Wales, lost power in August.    

Despite violence, especially at the hands of police, mass protests continue to colour streets around the world. Notable such events took place in the closing months of 2024 in Cambodia, Georgia, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria and the Republic of Korea. In Cambodia and Indonesia, the protests were successful in pushing the governments to backtrack on unpopular proposals, demonstrating the power of mass mobilization across diverse contexts.  

In other restricted environments, however, such as Azerbaijan, Cameroon and Ethiopia, the space has shrunk even more as civil society organizations have been targeted. In Nicaragua, new amendments have further criminalized dissidence and expanded the definition of who can be prosecuted, with the threat of “transnational” prosecutions and scrutiny of citizens abroad raising serious concerns.