2025 Annual Report

Will 2025 be seen as the turning point for global democracy? Most global analyses, including HRF’s Tyranny Tracker, come to the same stark conclusion: 76% of the world’s population lives in authoritarian regimes. Year after year we see the headlines: democratic decline, democratic backsliding, the rise of authoritarianism. 

The damage done by dictators is undeniable — they oppress and impoverish their people, wage war on their neighbors, and threaten peace and prosperity for all. 

For years we have warned that authoritarians are empowered on the world stage. Tyrants clearly feel emboldened by conciliatory policies from democratic governments and new technologies for surveillance, censorship, and control. Obituaries for freedom are premature, however. The statistic that gets lost in the headlines is that more than half of the world’s governments are democracies. And that number may be primed to grow. 

2025 saw a wave of protest movements from Nepal to Madagascar to Morocco. People, especially young people, stood up against abuse of power in Togo, Kenya, Bolivia, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Some of these movements have pushed tyrants from power. Taken together, they demonstrate that innovation, energy, and fierce demand for liberty have the power to turn the tide towards democracy and freedom. 

The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized María Corina Machado for leading, against all odds, Venezuela’s democratic opposition to victory in the 2024 elections. The award was a testimony to the indomitable spirit of the Venezuelan people unified peacefully in the cause of freedom.

If we can imagine a free Venezuela, we can imagine a free Nicaragua and a free Cuba. We can conceive of freedom’s champions prevailing in Equatorial Guinea and Belarus. 

We can dare to envision the people of Tibet and the Uyghur region liberated from the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression. We can dare to imagine the collapse of totalitarian regimes in China, in Russia, and in Iran. 

The year 2025 has given us rays of hope shining through the cracks in the authoritarian facade. We at HRF will be relentless in widening those cracks and in standing with those letting in the light. We are grateful to all who stand with us. 

We will prevail.