Freedom House’s annual “Freedom on the Net” report, released this month, paints a worrying picture of declining internet freedom in Russian-speaking parts of the world. Russia, Belarus and Central Asian states including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were rated as “not free” in the report, while Ukraine was rated “partially free.” With the exception of Belarus, all of these countries have fallen in the report’s ratings since last year.
The report uses a scoring process that measures barriers to accessing data, limits on internet content, and recorded violations of user rights as they are articulated by international human rights doctrine, as well as methodological criteria developed by the organization itself. Freedom House is based in the United States and is funded primarily by US government aid agencies.
