The European Court of Human Rights and Freedom House Ratings

echr fh

This graph (you may need to squint) shows Freedom House political rights scores for countries that belong to the European Court of Human Rights. The blue bar shows their score at the time of accession (if a FH score is available; they go back only to the 1970s), and the orange bar shows the score in 2014. I was curious about how countries have fared in light of Russian and Turkish backsliding, and of a general sense that international human rights is stagnating, but most countries have improved or not changed. A score of 1 is best; 7 is worst. Note that countries are arranged in the order that they joined the Council of Europe; the original members joined in 1949; Portugal in 1976; and Montenegro in 2007.