"More than 5.6 billion people have experienced a decline in their freedom of expression over the last 10 years. Scores have sunk in 77 countries, and only 35 countries are now ranked as ‘Open.’ Only 4% of us – fewer than 300 million people – across just 15 countries have experienced improvements in freedom of expression over the last decade. In the last decade, for every 1 person who has experienced improvement in their freedom of expression, 19 people have experienced deterioration." (https://www.globalexpressionreport.org)

"The Global Expression Report (GxR) is an annual look at the right to free expression and information worldwide. Its unique metric, based on 25 indicators of freedom of expression, tracks freedom of expression across 161 countries to create a score between 0 and 100 for every country. That score places each country in 1 of 5 expression categories: Open, Less Restricted, Restricted, Highly Restricted, or Crisis. Throughout the year, the GxR team produces periodic analyses based on the annual release of data by the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem). The V-Dem dataset is the world’s most authoritative data resource for examining the health of democracies around the world. ARTICLE 19 is grateful to the team at V-Dem for supporting our work on the GxR and its precursors since 2017. What makes the Global Expression Report different? While we can create and design data sets related to housing, education, or access to clean water, freedom of expression – the right to speak and to know – was long presumed to be immeasurable. This lack of data meant we could not know how many people worldwide enjoyed or lacked freedom of expression, which is foundational to all other human rights. That’s where the GxR comes in. The report is unique in that it provides a concrete measure and quantifiable perspective on expression: from posting online to protesting, investigating, and accessing the information needed to keep leaders accountable." (About)