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 

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. 

Representation 

One of the clearest trends to have emerged in the first six months of 2024 is that of attacks on opposition parties. Some of the most extreme examples include blanket bans on some political parties and coalitions imposed by the governments of Mali and Cameroon, respectively. The military regime in Gabon looks set to follow suit, after a national conference in April recommended the suspension of all political parties pending new regulations. The deaths of Bate Urgessa in Ethiopia and Yaya Dillo Djerou in Chad, both allegedly at the hands of state security forces, also highlighted the vulnerability of opposition politicians in these countries to physical attack. In Chad and in Zimbabwe, the courts have played a role in restricting political party freedom, with judiciaries controversially excluding opposition candidates from competing in key national elections and paving the way for incumbent wins.

Rights  

The region also experienced several significant advances and declines in LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights in the first half of the year. The parliaments of Ghana and Iraq passed highly restrictive anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation that prescribe heavy prison sentences for same sex relations, being transgender and promoting homosexuality, thereby shrinking civic space for advocacy and support work. The constitutionality of the Ghanaian bill, which has not yet been signed into law, is being challenged in the country’s Supreme Court. In June, Namibia’s high court overturned two colonial-era laws criminalising same-sex conduct, ruling that they unfairly discriminated against gay men and were therefore unconstitutional. The case was brought by a prominent Namibian LGBTQIA+ activist. Attitudes towards homosexuality vary across Africa and tolerance levels in Namibia and the southern Africa region more broadly are amongst the highest on the continent.

Gender equality continued to be undermined in Iran, where the police assaulted women and girls in a violent new hijab enforcement campaign in April. There was a potential setback, too, in Somalia, where a constitutional amendment setting the ‘age of maturity’ at 15 is predicted to perpetuate high levels of child marriage, particularly for girls. In contrast, Sierra Leone’s parliament passed legislation outlawing this practice. Women’s political representation was given a boost in the Democratic Republic of Congo, when President Félix Tshisekedi appointed the country’s first female prime minister, Judith Suminwa Tuluka.          

Rule of Law 

The impact of armed conflicts on the rule of law and rights is another area of concern for the region. Warnings from UN experts that genocide is being committed in Gaza and that it may have been committed in Darfur and the massacre of over two hundred civilians by the army in Burkina Faso, underscore the gravity of the breaches of Personal Integrity and Security and the threats the conflicts pose to Social Group Equality. Freedom of Movement has also been significantly impacted, with large scale displacement a feature of the wars in Gaza and Sudan, as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique, and the Amhara region of Ethiopia, where clashes between the government and ethnic militia have also prompted an extension of a state of emergency restricting people’s movement. The conflicts have also coincided with growing restrictions on Freedom of the Press, with operations or access to foreign media outlets suspended in Israel, Sudan and Burkina Faso. The repression of pro-Palestinian protests in Jordan highlighted how the effects of armed conflict on Civil Liberties are being felt beyond the borders of war-torn countries.   

Participation 

There were 10 national elections in Africa and Western Asia in the first half of the 2024 election supercycle, of which five were presidential and five parliamentary. The average voter turnout was 57.37 per cent. Turnout for Iran’s parliamentary elections and the first round of its Presidential election was particularly low (just 40 per cent in both), reflecting pervasive disenchantment with the country’s political system. In the countries that held parliamentary elections, average female representation declined from 18.46 to 16.97 per cent and none of the presidential elections returned a woman president -notwithstanding the appointment of new female prime minister in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Only Senegal’s presidential election resulted in a transfer of power, with Bassirou Diomaye Faye of the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity succeeding Macky Sall of the Alliance for the Republic. The election was also notable for the resilience shown by Senegal’s courts, electoral commission and civil society, which ensured a peaceful transition amidst a constitutional crisis that threatened to destabilise its democracy. In South Africa’s general elections, the long-governing African National Congress party lost its absolute majority, resulting in the formation of the first national coalition government since 1994.