Far more people are experiencing increases in repression than decreases. This is true over all our key periods: 1, 5, and 10 years.
• In the last year, 363 million people across 12 countries experienced declines in their freedom of expression, while 165 million people across 7 countries saw advances.
• In the last 5 years, 4.7 billion across 51 countries experienced declines in their freedom of expression, while only 673 million people in 25 countries saw advances.
• In the last 10 years, 6.3 billion people across 81 countries experienced declines in their freedom of expression, while 452 million people in 21 countries saw advances.
There are more countries in which freedoms are in decline than countries seeing rises in expression. What’s more, the countries in decline contain many more people than countries in advance, which tend to have much smaller populations. 95% of countries that advanced in the last decade had populations of under 50 million people, while only 74% of countries that declined over the same period had populations of that size.

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