Blog Post Mar 24, 2025 Enigmas What exactly is the problem here? Justin Callais on the ambiguities of corruption.
Blog Post Mar 21, 2025 Organized Crime Why do dictators keep disrupting so many other countries? Miranda Patrucić on what China and Russia are doing in neighboring nations, developing states, and the world’s most powerful democracies.
Blog Post Mar 17, 2025 Broad Daylight How common is the corruption of public officials in the U.S.? Ben Freeman on what America’s “authoritarian friends” from the Persian Gulf are doing in Washington, D.C.
Blog Post Mar 11, 2025 The Playbook: How Syria’s brutal Assad regime used football to maintain power Welcome to The Playbook, an explainer series from HRF’s Sports & Dictators program that explores the intersection of sports and politics in authoritarian regimes and decodes the disturbing narratives behind the games we love.
Blog Post Feb 10, 2025 The Playbook: How Saudi Arabia Uses Tennis to Present a Facade of Women’s Reforms When Saudi Arabia hosted one of the most important events in professional women’s tennis, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals, in November, it wasn’t, of course, without controversy. The New York Times put it this way:
Blog Post Jan 31, 2025 The prize that matters for Swaziland In December, the Secretary of State honored prominent Swazi human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko with the Human Rights Defender Award.
Blog Post Jan 8, 2025 Corruption Trails CBDC Projects in China, Nigeria, and Lebanon Central bankers have a corruption problem. Recently, Yao Qian, the former head of the People’s Bank of China’s research into central bank digital currency (CBDC), was removed from office and expelled from the Chinese Communist Party for engaging in corruption.
Blog Post Dec 19, 2024 Authoritarian incumbents claim most of 2024 elections across Africa More than 15 national elections took place across the African continent (including North Africa) in 2024.
Blog Post Dec 19, 2024 Legitimizing Aggression in Russia’s 2024 Vote Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia entered a period of profound political and economic change.
Blog Post Dec 19, 2024 Elections In Georgia: At the Crossroads between Russia and Europe Countries that once were democratic continued the descent into authoritarianism.
Blog Post Dec 18, 2024 Wear Your Values Holiday Gift Guide Wear Your Values aims to raise awareness about the human rights abuses worldwide that occur throughout the fashion industry’s supply chains.
Blog Post Dec 18, 2024 A Stolen Election and the Ongoing Struggle for Democracy In the days leading up to Venezuela’s July 28 elections, Venezuelans around the world were largely overcome by a sense of renewed, although fragile, faith in liberation.
Blog Post Dec 17, 2024 Elections in MENA: Youth as the Key to Change Sixty-five elections were held around the globe in 2024.
Blog Post Dec 16, 2024 How Elections in Asia Mirror Global Challenges to Democracy Sixty-five elections were held around the globe in 2024. What emerged from these polls was the realization that global democracy is at a critical juncture, especially with the disturbing trend of tyrants manipulating electoral systems to maintain their filthy grip on power.
Blog Post Dec 13, 2024 HRF Freedom Fellowship Spotlight: Samady Ou Born and raised in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Samady Ou was profoundly influenced by the experience of growing up under a dictatorship.
Blog Post Dec 8, 2020 Data Collection & Censorship in the Coronavirus Outbreak At the 2020 Oslo Freedom Forum, the Human Rights Foundation hosted a panel discussion about data collection and censorship as it relates to governmental responses to the coronavirus.
Blog Post Nov 27, 2024 Like, Tweet, & Torment: Maduro Weaponizes Popular Applications to Aid Election Theft Following Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election in which President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory over opposition candidate Edmundo González despite overwhelming data to the contrary — González received around 67% of the vote —thousands of Venezuelans have protested the results across the country.
Blog Post Nov 8, 2024 Election Watch Tunisia: Tunisia’s Democratic Dismantling Tunisian President Kais Saied won yet another election on Oct. 6, securing an overwhelming 90.7% of the vote, up from 73% since his previous win in 2019. His win, however, is anything but surprising, considering that he’s dismantled nearly all forms of democratic checks to his power.
Blog Post Nov 6, 2024 Exposing Aliyev’s Masquerade: The Illusion of Democracy Behind COP29 Next week, roughly 70,000 foreign guests are expected to flood into Baku for the most important climate forum of the year: COP29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Blog Post Oct 18, 2024 A History of Sports & Dictators, Part 4: Soviet Sports propaganda When Tsar Peter I — better known as Peter the Great — visited England in 1689, he arranged what has been called the “first international boxing match” in the garden of the nobleman’s home.
