The Civicus People Power Report 2025, released on December 9, confirms what civil society actors have been warning about long before the data could fully capture it: the global space for civic freedoms is shrinking at an unprecedented pace.

The report is unambiguous in its assessment: “Long-established democracies are showing signs of rapid authoritarian shift, marked by weakened rule of law and growing constraints on independent civil society.”

The 2025 findings paint a deeply troubling picture. Only 7% of the global population now lives in countries with free or relatively open civic space. The number of countries and territories where civic freedoms are routinely denied has surged to 83, up from 67 in 2020. The most common violations include the detention of protesters and journalists, underscoring how rapidly the tools of repression are spreading and being normalised across borders.

This year has been a hard one for democracy, so it is not surprising that several powerful countries, including the United States, France, and Germany, have been downgraded. Notably, Civicus has reclassified the United States from “narrowed” to “obstructed”, a category where the full enjoyment of civil rights is systematically constrained through legal and practical barriers.

This downgrade is not merely symbolic. When the United States retreats from its long-standing commitments to human rights and multilateralism, the consequences are felt across the world with........

© Scroll.in