ISLAMABAD, Dec 15: Pakistan is ranked among the 48 countries labelled as “Not Free” and denying their citizens political rights and civil liberties, a study titled “Freedom in the World 2001-2002” by the US based Freedom House said.

The study by the Freedom House concludes that there is a dramatic, expanding gap in the levels of freedom and democracy between Islamic countries and the rest of the world. The study, Freedom in the World 2001-2002, finds that a non-Islamic country is more than three times likely to be democratic than an Islamic state.

In all, according to the report, there are 86 free countries, representing 2.54 billion people and 41.40 per cent of the global population in which basic political rights and civil liberties are recognized.

There are 58 Partly Free countries in which there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties. These states also suffer from an environment of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and often a setting in which a single political party enjoys dominance despite the facade of limited pluralism. Approximately 23.25 per cent of the world’s population, 1.43bn persons, lives in such partly free societies.

There are 2.17bn people, 35.35 per cent of the global population, living in 48 “Not Free” countries, where basic political rights are absent and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied. Political rights and civil liberties are more limited in these countries, in which corruption, dominant ruling parties, and, in some cases, ethnic or religious strife are often the norm.

At the end of 2001, there were 121 electoral democracies among the world’s 192 states. The 1987-88 survey found just 66 of 167 countries were electoral democracies. The number of new democratically elected governments has increased by 55 over the space of 14 years, an average of nearly four per year, the report states.

In Asia, the report points out, 18 of the region’s 39 countries are Free (46 per cent), 10 are Partly Free (26 per cent), and 11 are Not Free (28 per cent).

The report states that since the early 1970s, when the third major historical wave of democratisation began, the Islamic world, and, in particular, its Arabic core have seen little significant evidence of improvements in political openness, respect for human rights, and transparency.

“Of the 192 countries in the world today, 121 are electoral democracies; but in countries with an Islamic majority, only 11 of 47 have democratically elected governments, or 23 per cent.” In the non-Islamic world, there are 110 electoral democracies out of 145 states, over 76 per cent, the report said.

The report said that while electoral democracies are the norm in over three-fourth’s of the world’s non-Islamic states, in countries with a majority Islamic population there are 10 presidential — parliamentary democracies and one parliamentary democracy.

At the same time, the report said, within the Islamic world there are nine countries with authoritarian presidencies, there are seven with dominant party states in which opposition parties are nominal, there are six with presidential-parliamentary systems with features of authoritarian rule, there are nine traditional monarchies, there are three one-party states, there is one military-ruled state, and, until November there was one fundamentalist theocracy, Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban.

In a comparative analysis, the report said, 20 years ago, there was also one Free country among states with a majority Islamic population, while there were 20 that were Partly Free and 18 not free. By contrast, at the close of 1981, the rest of the world registered 50 free countries (the majority of them from Europe and North America), 31 partly free countries, and 42 not free countries.