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While the Online Edition contains all country chapters, we also make available a “Key Countries” edition to download. This may be useful if you particularly want to read the introductory material in PDF form, or to print copies locally. The Key Countries Edition contains only a small number of select countries. We do not […]

If you are interested in joining one of our quarterly training sessions in how to research and update the Freedom of Thought Report, you can sign up here (clicking on this link will direct you to the events page of Humanists International). If you are in the process of updating […]

To mark the annual publication of its Key Countries Edition, Humanists International holds a launch event. Below you can find details of launch events from each year of the Report. 2025 On 30 January, the American Humanist Association hosted the international launch of the 2024 Key Countries Edition. Guest speakers […]

Following a revision to our editorial policy in 2022, it has now been agreed that each year, one fifth of all countries across the globe are reviewed as part of a rolling cycle of updates. The following are countries that have not been updated in this year’s cycle, but that […]

We only plan to conduct a full review of each country entry every five years, based on the rolling schedule outlined below. Every country entry clearly indicates when it was last updated at the top left hand side. Outside of this schedule we will generally not make edits or changes […]

With its historical metropolis, Istanbul, being the only city in the world said to be straddling Asia and Europe, Turkey has long been pulled ideologically in divergent directions. Turkey counts a population of 82 million people, 99% of whom are nominally Muslim (predominantly Sunni, with a substantial minority of Alevi). […]

Below you can download the two ranked lists of all countries featured in the Report as at October 2020, when the 2020 edition of the Freedom of Thought Report was finalized for publication. The ranking index is an extension of our Ratings System. The base score for each country is […]

A limb of southern Europe stretching out into the Mediterranean, Italy is a nation whose Roman past penetrates deeply into European cultural history, and whose Renaissance prefigured the modern humanist movement. Despite this, the Catholic Church remains a predominant force in the country today. According to a 2021 study by […]

A presidential democratic republic, Côte d’Ivoire (or Ivory Coast) is located in West Africa, on the Gulf of Guinea. The country declared independence from France in 1960 and was considered a stable and prosperous nation for three subsequent decades. In recent times, the country has been through a troubled period, […]

Israel has a population of around 8.7 million people. Those identifying as Jews represent an estimated 75% of the population, while 17.8% identify as Muslims. Smaller religious minorities are Druze (1.6%), Christians (2%), Baha’is, Samaritans, Karaites and Jehovah’s Witnesses.1https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/israel-population Established as a homeland for the Jewish people in 1948, Israel’s […]

Thailand is a country which is very rich in its diversity. Once governed by an absolute monarchy (Chakri Dynasty), it is now a constitutional monarchy, where the monarch is viewed as a living god. The nation’s democracy has been punctuated by at least 12 successful coups d’état since 1932.1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/20/thailands-army-says-this-definitely-isnt-a-coup-heres-11-times-it-definitely-was/; https://www.ft.com/content/88970d60-e1b0-11e3-9999-00144feabdc0 […]

Below you can download the two ranked lists of all countries featured in the Report as at October 2019, when the 2019 edition of the Freedom of Thought Report is published. The ranking index is an extension of our Ratings System. The base score for each country is calculated by […]

Today we are launching the seventh annual edition of The Freedom of Thought Report. This website is the “Online Edition” of the Report. It contains the most up to date entries for every country in the world. Use the map on the front of this site or visit the Country Index to […]

Boundary condition changes in 2019 Angola Added information on Catholic influences with serious human rights concerns. Applied level-4 condition: “Systemic religious privilege results in significant social discrimination”. Therefore removed the superceded null condition in the “Society” strand. Botswana Added interview and testimony on social situation. Applied level-2 condition: “Localised or […]

The following are two ranked lists of all countries featured in the Report as at October 2018, when the 2018 edition of the Freedom of Thought Report is published. The ranking index is an extension of our Ratings System. The base score for each country is calculated by adding how […]

Editorial Introduction to the 2019 edition By Bob Churchill Bob Churchill is Editor of the Freedom of Thought Report and Director of Communications and Campaigns at Humanists International The push to abolish ‘blasphemy’ laws is proceeding apace in many western countries. This is a trend that must be welcomed as […]

Preface to the 2024 edition By Andrew Copson Andrew Copson is the President of Humanists International The freedoms of expression, thought, conscience, and belief are the foundations upon which our humanist ideals are built. They are the measure of an open, modern, democratic society. They are also legal human rights, […]

Foreword to the 2024 edition By Leena Manimekalai, award-winning Indian poet and filmmaker ‘A Trial by Fire’ In December 2021, when I received word that my submission to the i am…project’s call for proposals1“Landing page”, iamstory.org, accessed 4 November 2024, https://iamstory.org/#Landing_page had been selected as part of Toronto Metropolitan University’s […]

EMBARGOED FOR 5 DECEMBER 2017 – 00:01 (GMT) This page is not navigable from the site menu and is only made available for press contacts prior to the launch of the Report. A preview of The Freedom of Thought Report 2017 “Key Countries” edition is available for press contacts: > Download the preview […]

Today in Brussels we launched the fifth edition of the Freedom of Thought Report. And in a huge change this year the report is no longer primarily a downloadable PDF. We have been busy building an online system so that each country in the world now has its own individual […]

Credits of the 2024 edition Editor Emma Wadsworth-Jones Associate Editors Elizabeth O’Casey & Céline Grey Contributors Leena Manimekalai Volunteer researchers Jessica Marvatta, Lawrence Rickard, Petra Schmidt, Caitlin Windle, Scott Jacobsen,and our anonymous volunteer contributors Special thanks to the following Humanists International Members and Associates: Association for Republicanism and Secularism, Associação […]

We defer to the United Nations geo-schema1<unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm> in general to list and organize nation states. We endeavor to include all fully independent and sovereign states in the report; while some disputed territories, overseas territories, dependencies, constituent countries, or non-self-governed territories are not included. If there is known information pertinent to a […]

By Bob Churchill Bob Churchill is Director of Communications at the IHEU, and Editor of the Freedom of Thought Report This report records discrimination against the non-religious, from the relatively minor to the most serious. At that most serious end of the scale, we record how numerous states continue to systematically […]

By Andrew Copson Andrew Copson is President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) Published by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), the Freedom of Thought Report is now in its fifth annual edition. In 2012, our first edition was an expanded version of a submission by several […]

By Ahmed Shaheed Dr Shaheed is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, as of 1 November 2016. The right to freedom of religion or belief is a right that is frequently misunderstood by its conflation with narrowly defined views on religious freedom. Such narratives often overlook the […]

The Freedom of Thought Report by Humanists International is a unique annual report and online resource which looks at the rights and treatment of humanists, and the non-religious generally, in every country in the world. Specifically, this report looks at how non-religious individuals—whether they call themselves atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, […]

Humanists International makes all the data on the assessment criteria applied to each country in the Report available for use under the following license. Freedom of Thought Report by Humanists International is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The open data is hosted on Google Drive. The data should be […]

Every country in this report is assessed against a range of “boundary conditions“. The boundary conditions are statements which may or may not apply to each country. Each boundary condition is associated with one of four thematic strands (these are the vertical columns in the table below). Also, each boundary condition is placed at […]

Tuvalu is a parliamentary democracy located midway between Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific Ocean. The islands of Tuvalu are no more than fifteen feet above sea level, and the islands are often the victim of cyclones. Rising sea levels also threaten the nation.1https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/will-tuvalu-disappear-beneath-the-sea-180940704/ As of 2020, Tuvalu’s population was […]

Tonga is a Constitutional monarchy, however, in a partial democratization of the system, a Prime Minister backed by a parliament was appointed in 2010.1https://freedomhouse.org/country/tonga/freedom-world/2021 Tonga is an archipelago, spanning 800 kilometers and made up of 176 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The population is estimated to be 106,000 as of […]

Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa, is a very small Oceanianic country of about 200,000 thousand inhabitants. It maintains a single-party parliamentary democracy, in principle. However, only the matai (clan chiefs, or heads of extended families) are eligible to run as candidates.1https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SAMOA-2020-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf Constitution and government The Constitution2https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/44021/124322/F-82949215/WSM44021.pdf protects the […]

Palau, part of a former United Nations Trust territory, became independent in 1994. A population of 20,600 people inhabit an archipelago of volcanic and coral islands. According to the 2020 Census,1https://www.palaugov.pw/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2020-Census-of-Population-and-Housing.pdf the nation is predominantly Christian: 47% of whom are Catholic; 25% Evangelical; 5% Seventh Day Adventist. In addition to […]

Nauru is an island republic with a unicameral parliament and no political parties, with politicians usually standing on independent platforms. With a population of around 11,500, the island is the smallest republic in the world.1https://pacificdata.org/data/dataset/spc_nru_2019_phc_v01_m According to the most recent full census (2011), the Nauruan population is predominantly Christian (95%). […]

The Federated States of Micronesia is a nation located in the western Pacific Ocean and made up of more than 600 individual islands which are ruled by a parliamentary republic without established political parties. A high percentage of the population is religious, with a majority declaring themselves to be Christian.1https://countryeconomy.com/demography/religions/micronesia […]

Located in the Pacific ocean and officially renamed in 1982 the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is an independent island nation (70 sq. miles of land spread out over 750,000 sq. miles of ocean) that is part of the larger island group of Micronesia. Micronesian colonists occupied the islands […]

Kiribati (officially pronounced Kiribas) is a presidential republic, which gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1979 and joined the United Nations as a full member in 1999. The majority of the population live on the largest island, Tarawa. According to its 2020 census,1https://pacificdata.org/data/dataset/spc_kir_2020_phc_v01_m/resource/dd60866e-258d-4043-ae86-4862e8ba2cc9?inner_span=True approximately 98% of the population is […]

Vanuatu is a small island state in the South Pacific made up of a string of at least 80 islands with an estimated population of 318,007.1“Vanuatu”, The World Factbook, CIA, last updated 25 November 2024 https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/vanuatu/ Formerly known as the New Hebrides, it was under joint British and French administration […]

Solomon Islands is an archipelago comprising 997 islands and atolls located in the Melanesian region of the Pacific. The island group covers a land area of 28,230 km2, with six larger islands: Guadalcanal; Choiseul; Santa Isabel; New Georgia; Malaita; and Makira.1http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/solomon-islands It is a Constitutional Monarchy governed under a multiparty […]

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is located on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. The country was divided between Germany and the UK in 1885 and became independent in 1976.1https://www.rnz.co.nz/collections/u/new-flags-flying/nff-png/about-png#:~:text=Papua%20and%20New%20Guinea%20used,the%20southern%20regions%20%27Papua%27. PNG has a functioning democracy. Elections are regularly held despite some irregularities and violence. The judiciary enjoys independence, […]

Since gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1970, Fiji has suffered four military coups, with the last taking place in 2006. Although this political instability has complex causes, ethno-political divisions between the Indo-Fijian and indigenous Fijian communities are generally accepted as a major underlying factor. Historically these divisions have […]

New Zealand consists of two main islands and other outlying smaller islands. It has a population of approximately 5 million (as estimated in March 2020) and has a democratic, parliamentary government. The larger Realm of New Zealand includes the democratic self-governing Associated States: the Cook Islands, population approximately 17,500 (2016 […]

A continent in itself, Australia is a federal, parliamentary democracy. With a population in excess of 25.9 million, and a total area of 7,692,024 km2, it is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world.1https://www.abs.gov.au/ According to the 2021 Census,2https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/cultural-diversity-census/2021 44% of those who responded were Christian, 39% […]

The Constitution of Switzerland and other laws and policies both protect and respect religious freedom in practice. However, some discrimination based on religious identity, belief, or practice have been reported. According to national statistics, almost 37% of Swiss nationals are Roman Catholic; the Reformed Evangelical community makes up a further 24.4%. […]

The Netherlands is a democratic, constitutional monarchy in Western Europe, generally recognised as a liberal country that formally has an even-handed policy towards religious and non-religious views. As of 2017, the largest belief group in the Netherlands were the non-religious, accounting for 50.7% of the population; a further 24% identified […]

Monaco, officially known as Principality of Monaco, is a sovereign city-state located along the Mediterranean French Riviera. The city of Nice in France lies 9 miles (15 km) to the West, and the Italian border 5 miles (8 km) to the East. With an area of 2.1 km (0.81 sq […]