Founded in the 1940s, it produces reports on the progress of democracy and freedom in the government of countries around the world, and produces annual scores representing countries' progress (or otherwise) towards freedom.
For example, in their 2003 report, the fully democratic nation of Canada got a perfect score of a "1" in civil liberties and a "1" in political rights, earning them the rank of "free." The slightly more oppressive nation of Nigeria got a "5" and a "4" earning them the rank of "Partly Free," while an out and out dictatorship like North Korea scored the lowest rank of "7-7", and was thus dubbed "not free."
Being a non-profit organization Freedom House is funded by donations from various doners.
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