In a year of intensified repression against human-rights defenders and democratic activists by many of the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes, Freedom House found a continued erosion of freedom worldwide, with setbacks in Latin America, Africa, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. For the fourth consecutive year, declines trumped gains, creating the longest continuous period of deterioration in the nearly forty-year history of Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual assessment of the state of political rights and civil liberties in every country in the world.