The Political Terror Scale

Boundaries, Borders, and Front Lines: Coding Territorially Ambiguous Units

2025-09-27T00:00:00-04:00

Arguably one of the most common misconceptions about the PTS is that the our scores constitute an assessment or judgment about true state of human rights conditions in countries around the globe. In this view, a PTS score of say 5 is understood to indicate that human rights conditions in a particular country are horrendous, whereas a score of 1 provides a clean bill of health – human rights are well protected and no abuses of basic physical integrity rights have taken place.

In reality, the scope of the PTS is much more limited. What we provide are simply assessments of human rights conditions as reported by human rights monitoring organizations (i.e., Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the U.S. State Department). PTS coders read human rights reports and assign scores based on the conditions described in the annual human rights reports. In other words, we assign scores to reports and not to countries.

More accurately then, a score of 5 indicates that a monitoring organization (e.g., Amnesty International) produced a damning report describing human rights conditions as especially dire. A score of 1 would indicate that no abuses were reported by the organization for a particular country. While this distinction might appear arcane and technical, it is critical to understand and interpret the scores we produce. As such, a score of 5 only indicates that a monitoring organization wrote a devastating report. The reality on the ground may very well be different. Similarly, a score of 1 does not necessarily mean no abuses have taken place but merely that none were reported.¹

Importantly, the PTS’s focus on reports as the unit of analysis (see also: PTS Codebook) has important implications for our work and creates a vexing challenge for PTS coders every year. Because we score or classify human rights reports based on the reported abuses that were perpetrated by state actors rather than by private or civil society actors (see: State Actor Requirement in the PTS Codebook) inside the territorial boundaries of the entity in question (see: Territoriality Requirement in the PTS Codebook), coders have to determine whether any reported abuse was perpetrated by a state actor and whether it took place inside of the boundaries of the country or territory in question.

It should be noted here that our emphasis on state actors inside of the territorial boundaries of the state or territory in question, implies that PTS scores often do not accurately represent the extent to which a country protects or respects human rights. All too frequently, a country’s human rights record outside of its territorial borders is far worse than its human rights practices domestically. Similarly, the PTS is likely an incomplete measure of the human rights conditions citizens actually experience, as only human rights violations perpetrated by state actors are considered by coders. State perpetrated abuses are likely dwarfed by non-state sources of human insecurity.

Applying the State Actor Requirement and especially the Territoriality Requirement to reports is complicated by the fact that all three monitoring organizations whose reports we rely on (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the U.S. State Department) regularly produce reports covering entities that are not conventional nation-states or whose boundaries are contested. As a result, the coding rules require coders to determine who qualifies as the relevant state actor in territories that are not conventional states and whose borders are contested and often in flux.

For example, all three have over the years issued reports for Western Sahara (a non-self-governing territory under partial Moroccan military occupation). Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department publish annual reports on Taiwan (a territory claimed by the People Republic of China). The State Department provides sub-reports (embedded under the China report) for Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet, Amnesty International a report for Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory), and Human Rights Watch reports for the European Union and the African Union (both supra-national organizations). The U.S. State Department also issued reports for Crimea (which Russia annexed from the Ukraine in 2014) and more recently all three monitors published reports (or sub-reports) for Russia-occupied areas in the Ukraine. A final set of territorially ambiguous or contested reports (or sub-reports) concern Israel, the Israeli Occupied Territories, Gaza, the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, and Palestine.

While we have by no means been consistent over the years when coding these reports (see the section: The Unique Case of Israel, the Occupied Territories, and Palestine below), our approach to coding reports for these units, entities, or territories is as follows:

Example 1: Morocco and Western Sahara

If a monitoring organization releases a separate report (or a nested sub-report under the Morocco report) for Western Sahara, we treat both Morocco and Western Sahara as distinct units and assign a score for each. Coders are asked to only take into account abuses perpetrated by Moroccan state agents (e.g., Moroccan police or military) inside Morocco – that is not in Western Sahara. Any human rights violation by Moroccan authorities inside Western Sahara is to be treated as extra-territorial and should not affect Morocco’s human rights score at all.²: Similarly, to assign a score to the Western Sahara report, coders are instructed to only consider actions by Western Saharan authorities inside of Western Sahara.
If a monitoring organization issues only a report for Morocco (and not for Western Sahara) which treats Western Sahara as a part of Morocco, coders are instructed to consider any abuses by Moroccan authorities inside Morocco and Western Sahara when assigning a score. Abuses perpetrated by non-Moroccan authorities should be disregarded like those of other non-state actors (e.g., rebel or insurgent groups, private citizens, corporate actors).

Example 2: The European and African Union

When coding Human Rights Watch reports for the African and European Union, coders are to consider any human rights violations perpetrated by African or European authorities as well as those perpetrated by authorities of individual member states that occur inside the territorial boundaries of member states.

Example 3: Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, and the Russia-occupied areas of the Ukraine

In 2019, 2021, and 2022, the U.S. State Department issued a sub-report (under the Ukraine report) covering human rights conditions in Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014. Coders are instructed to consider physical integrity rights violations perpetrated by the de-facto authorities in Crimea (i.e., Russian police, military, et cetera) when coding this sub-report. Importantly any abuse perpetrated by Russian or Ukrainian authorities in Crimea must be disregarded as extra-territorial for purposes of coding the reports for Russia and the Ukraine.

Starting in 2022, the State Department also produced a sub-report for Russia-Occupied Areas as part of its Ukraine report.³ Just as the report for Crimea, coders are tasked with treating the Russian occupiers as the de facto state actor and to consider only violations perpetrated by Russian occupation authorities (e.g., military) in the occupied areas when assigning a score. Again, any abuses perpetrated by Russian or Ukrainian forces within the boundaries of the occupied areas must be disregarded as extra-territorial when coding the Russia and Ukraine reports.

The Unique Case of Israel, the Occupied Territories, and Palestine

The most prominent, and likely most controversial, example of territorial ambiguity concerns reports and sub-reports for Israel, the Occupied Territories, the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and Palestine. All three monitoring organizations, on whose reports we base our scores, have reported on these entities differently. Since 1977, the U.S. State Department has issued a report for Israel containing a detailed sub-report for either the Occupied Territories, or for Gaza and the West Bank. Amnesty International has published reports on Israel including the Occupied Territories since 1977, but in addition has produced a separate report for the Palestine Authority/Palestine starting in 1997. Human Rights Watch reported only on the Occupied Territories from 1989 to 1997 and began publishing a single report for Israel and the Occupied Territories/Palestine since 1998. However, these combined reports contain explicit – albeit brief – subsections on the Palestinian Authority (in the West Bank) and Hamas (in Gaza).

History of the Reports for Israel, the Occupied Territories, and Palestine

Below, I provide a summary of the changes to report and sub-report titles as well as section headers for the annual reports published by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and State Department since 1977.

U.S. State Department Israel Reports

2020–2025: Israel, West Bank and Gaza
- sub-report: West Bank and Gaza
2018–2019: Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza
- sub-report: West Bank and Gaza
1977–2017: Israel and the Occupied Territories
- sub-report: The Occupied Territories

Amnesty International Israel Reports

2008–2025: Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
1998–2007: Israel and the Occupied Territories
1995–1997: Israel (the State of) and the Occupied Territories, including areas under the Palestinian Authority’s jurisdiction
1977–1994: :Israel (the State of) and the Occupied Territories

Amnesty International Palestine Reports

2014–2025: Palestine (State of)
2000–2013: Palestinian Authority
1997–1999: Palestinian Authority (areas under the jurisdiction of the)

Human Rights Watch Israel/Palestine Reports

2013–2025: Israel and Palestine
- subsection: The Palestinian Authority
- subsection: Hamas and Palestinian Armed Groups
2012: Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories
- subsection: The Palestinian Authority
- subsection: Hamas
2010–2011: Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories
- subsection: The Palestinian Authority
2009: Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories
- subsection: The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas
2006–2008: Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories
2005: no country reports published
1998–2004 Israel, the Occupied West Bank & Gaza Strip
- subsection: Palestinian Authority Territories
1992–1997 Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
1989–1991 Israeli-occupied Territories

How Have We Coded These Reports?

The short answer is inconsistently. To cover the bewildering diversity in reports among the three monitoring organizations, we have over the years coded the following units in our data set:

Israel (1976–2015) – Israel including Occupied Territories
Israel (2016–2024) – Israel not including Occupied Territories
Israel in the Occupied Territories (1994–2015, 2023, 2024)
Israel in pre-1967 borders (1994–2015)
Palestine, State of(1994–2024)
Gaza (Hamas) (2011-2014)

Beginning with Amnesty International’s and the U.S. State Department’s 1977 reports, the PTS team has coded the unit Israel. Up until the 2016 reports, coders treated the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem as under Israeli control for coding purposes.⁴ Any physical integrity rights violations by Israeli authorities in Israel or the Occupied Territories were factored into Israel’s score.

In 1995, we began to code three additional units: Israel in the Occupied Territories which accounts only for abuses perpetrated by Israeli authorities in the Occupied Territories; Israel in pre-1967 borders for violations perpetrated by Israeli authorities inside of the boundaries as they existed prior to the 1967 Six-Day War (i.e., not including the Occupied Territories); and Palestine, State of which captures violations perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority in the Occupied Territories, and later those by Hamas in Gaza.⁵

It is clear that the coding of these units is entirely inconsistent with the PTS Codebook in so far as we claim to code reports, yet none of the reporting organizations provide a report for Israel in the Occupied Territories or Israel in pre-1967 borders, and only Amnesty International has published corresponding reports for the Palestinian Authority or Palestine, State of.

In 2012 we added the unit Gaza (Hamas) to distinguish abuses perpetrated in the parts of the Occupied Territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, from those perpetrated by Hamas after its takeover of Gaza in 2007. As such, from 2012 to 2016 we were coding five distinct units (most of which did not correspond to a report from either Amnesty International or the State Department). We produced a score for Israel and the Occupied Territories, Israel in the Occupied Territories, Israel excluding the Occupied Territories, and separate scores for the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the territories they controlled, respectively.

Producing five scores based on two Amnesty International reports and five scores based on one State Department report (and one sub-report) was incredibly challenging for our coders who were tasked annually to parse the often vague reporting of dynamic borders, boundaries, and front lines, as well as to identify the appropriate de-facto state actor for each unit. To improve matters and bring our coding activities into line with the PTS codebook, in 2017 we reduced the number of units to two: Israel and Palestine, State of.

Thus, the score for Israel would now exclude Israeli abuses perpetrated in the Occupied Territories and treat them as extra-territorial. It is therefore equivalent to the dropped unit Israel in pre-1967 borders. Importantly, this implies that PTS scores for Israel from 1976 to 2015 are not comparable to scores for Israel from 2016 to the present, as they are two distinct territorial units merely sharing a name. The score for Palestine, State of now includes abuses perpetrated by any de-facto state actor (i.e., the Palestinian Authority and Hamas) against individuals in territories under their control (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza).

It is worth reiterating that the PTS aims to capture state perpetrated physical integrity rights violations against individuals within a state’s territorial jurisdiction. And although the decision to code only Israel and Palestine, State of certainly reduced the complexity of our coding effort, it also meant that Israeli abuses in the Occupied Territories did not affect Israel’s PTS scores, while violations by Palestinian authorities (such as Hamas) inside of Israel’s pre-1967 borders were excluded from Palestine’s PTS scores.

Although, disregarding extra-territorial abuse may align with our coding rules, applying our rules rigidly amid the contested, indeterminate, and legally ambiguous status of the Occupied Territories and Palestine in relation to Israel calls the substantive value of the resulting PTS scores into question. In large part because of these concerns, following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing Gaza War, we suspended coding the Israel and Palestine reports in 2024.

This year (2025) we resumed our coding of the Israel and Palestine reports and also coded the reports from last year. In response to our own concerns as to how to approach these reports, we brought back the unit Israel in the Occupied Territories to go along with our scores for Israel (which again is equivalent to Israel in pre-1967 borders) and Palestine, State of. Our Israel scores accounts for reported abuses by Israeli authorities inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders excluding abuses perpetrated in the Occupied Territories. Our scores for Israel in the Occupied Territories cover violations by Israeli authorities in the Occupied Territories (i.e., the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem). Scores for Palestine, State of account for abuses by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the areas they nominally control. As such, our coding of the reports covering the various Israel and Palestine reports mirror our approach to coding Russia, the Ukraine, and the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine (i.e., Crimea, and parts of Eastern Ukraine). The 2023 and 2024 PTS scores for these units are reported in Table 1, below.

Table 1: 2023 and 2024 PTS Scores for Israel, Palestine, Russia, Ukraine, and Occupied Territories

Unit	PTS_A 2023	PTS_A 2024	PTS_H 2023	PTS_H 2024	PTS_S 2023	PTS_S 2024
Israel	3	4	4	4	4	3
Israel in the Occupied Territories	5	5	5	5	5	4
Palestine, State of	4	4	4	3	4	4
Russian Federation	4	5	4	4	5	5
Russia-Occupied Areas (Ukraine)	5	–	5	–	5	5
Ukraine	3	1	4	2	3	2

Note: Shown are the most recent PTS scores included in this years release.

Our decision to code three units for 2023 and 2024 represents a judgment call in favor of greater consistency with our coding rules. The drawback, however, is that the human rights conditions experienced by citizens on the ground – specifically Israelis within the pre-1967 borders – are not fully reflected.

Measuring Human Insecurity: Consistency at the Expense of Validity?

The case of Israel and Palestine is, unfortunately, only the most prominent – and arguably the most controversial – example of an inconsistent application of our coding rules. Other cases where the State Actor Requirement and the Territoriality Requirement pose challenges include many states experiencing civil conflict (e.g., Yemen, Libya), where it is often unclear who the state actors are and what territory they actually control. “Failed states” (e.g., Somalia) and unrecognized states (e.g., Somaliland) represent another category that is almost impossible to code.

Ultimately, the challenges and the trade-offs discussed above highlight both the necessity and the limitations of our approach. By coding reports rather than attempting the impossible task of reconstructing a complete record of human rights practices, we acknowledge that our data can never fully capture the complexities and realities on the ground. At times, the decisions we make may seem arbitrary, especially in contested, fragile, or ambiguous political contexts. Still, by striving for transparency and adhering as consistently as possible to our coding rules, we aim to provide researchers with a tool that, while limited, remains useful for systematic comparison and long-term analysis.

Reasons for “misreporting” are likely manifold. Monitors may miss or fail to uncover abuses or face organizational or political incentives to exaggerate or understate human rights abuses in their reports. For more on potential biases, see our post: Missingness and Comparability of Scores or our paper What bias? Changing Standards, Information Effects, and Human Rights Measurement. ↩
For some, the disregarding of states’ extra-territorial human rights violations has long been considered a disqualifying shortcoming of the PTS. Abuse, torture, and even genocide, occurring outside the territorial jurisdiction of a country or territory (e.g., violations committed during war) are not within the scope of the PTS. The PTS is solely attempting to capture state-perpetrated abuse within its territorial jurisdiction. ↩
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch released sub-reports for Russian occupied territories in Eastern Ukraine in 2024. ↩
Up until 2016 this unit was listed as Israel and the Occupied Territories. ↩
Until 2016 the unit Palestine, State of was listed as Palestinian Authority. ↩

2025 PTS Release

2025-09-27T00:00:00-04:00

We released the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. The newly released scores cover human rights conditions in countries and territories for the calendar year 2024. A visual of temporal trends of the average PTS-scores is shown in Figure 1. Table 1 reports the breakdowns of reports by the level of political terror (PTS-score).

Figure 1: Annual Average Human Rights Scores

Figure 1: Shown are annual averages and 95% confidence intervals for PTS_A (based on Amnesty International's reports), PTS_H (based on Human Rights Watch reports), and PTS_S (based on the U.S. State Department reports).

Table 1: Human Rights Reports by PTS-Level

Scale	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Reports
PTS_A (Amnesty International)	32 (20.9%)	40 (26.1%)	46 (30.1%)	19 (12.4%)	16 (10.5%)	153 (100%)
PTS_H (Human Rights Watch)	7 (6.7%)	21 (20.2%)	37 (35.6%)	26 (25.0%)	13 (12.5%)	104 (100%)
PTS_S (U.S. State Department)	65 (32.8%)	46 (23.2%)	50 (25.3%)	24 (12.1%)	13 (6.6%)	198 (100%)

Table 1: Shown are the number of reports coded (percentages in parentheses) by PTS-Score.

This year’s release includes:

153 PTS scores based on the 2025 Amnesty International: The State of the World’s Human Rights: April 2025.
104 PTS scores based on the 2025 Human Rights Watch: World Report 2025: Events of 2024.
198 PTS scores based on the 2025 U.S. State Department: 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
PTS scores for the units of Israel, Israel in the Occupied Territories, and Palestine based on Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and State Department reports for 2023 and 2024.¹
Two new units: the African Union (PTS_H) and Niue (PTS_S).

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

Last year’s version as well as older data releases of the PTS will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

More details about our decision to code two scores per report for Israel can be found in our post on territoriality issues: Boundaries, Borders, and Front Lines: Coding Territorially Ambiguous Units. ↩

2024 PTS Release

2024-08-14T00:00:00-04:00

We have released the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. The newly released scores cover human rights conditions in countries and territories for the year 2023. A a visual of temporal trends of the average PTS-scores is shown in Figure 1. Table 1 reports the breakdowns of reports by the level of political terror (PTS-score).

Figure 1: Annual Average Human Rights Scores

Table 1: Human Rights Reports by PTS-Level

Scale	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Reports
PTS_A (Amnesty International)	30 (19.5%)	43 (27.9%)	46 (29.9%)	18 (11.7%)	17 (11.0%)	154 (100%)
PTS_H (Human Rights Watch)	11 (10.5%)	18 (17.1%)	35 (33.3%)	26 (24.8%)	15 (14.3%)	105 (100%)
PTS_S (U.S. State Department)	63 (32.5%)	41 (21.1%)	53 (27.3%)	23 (11.9%)	14 (7.2%)	194 (100%)

Table 1: Shown are the number of reports coded (percentages in parentheses) by PTS-Score.

This year’s release includes:

154 PTS scores based on the 2024 Amnesty International: The State of the World’s Human Rights: April 2024.
105 PTS scores based on the 2024 Human Rights Watch: World Report 2024: Events of 2023.
194 PTS scores based on the 2024 U.S. State Department: 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

Last year’s version as well as older data releases of the PTS will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

2023 PTS Release

2023-09-22T00:00:00-04:00

We have released the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. The newly released scores cover human rights conditions in countries and territories for the year 2022. A a visual of temporal trends of the average PTS-scores is shown in Figure 1. Table 1 reports the breakdowns of reports by the level of political terror (PTS-score).

Figure 1: Annual Average Human Rights Scores

Table 1: Human Rights Reports by PTS-Level

Scale	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Reports
PTS_A (Amnesty International)	34 (27.1%)	40 (25.5%)	41 (26.1%)	27 (17.2%)	15 (9.6%)	157 (100%)
PTS_H (Human Rights Watch)	9 (8.7%)	19 (18.4%)	38 (36.9%)	24 (23.3%)	13 (12.6%)	103 (100%)
PTS_S (U.S. State Department)	58 (29.6%)	49 (25.0%)	47 (24.0%)	24 (12.2%)	18 (9.2%)	196 (100%)

Table 1: Shown are the number of reports coded (percentages in parentheses) by PTS-Score.

This year’s release includes:

157 PTS scores based on the 2023 Amnesty International Report 2021/22: The State of the World’s Human Rights.
103 PTS scores based on the 2023 Human Rights Watch World Report 2023: Events of 2022.
196 PTS scores based on the 2023 U.S. State Department 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

Last year’s version as well as older data releases of the PTS will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

2022 PTS Release

2022-08-25T00:00:00-04:00

Figure 1: Annual Average Human Rights Scores

This year’s release includes:

155 PTS scores based on the 2021 Amnesty International Report 2020/21: The State of the World’s Human Rights.
104 PTS scores based on the 2021 Human Rights Watch World Report 2020.
196 PTS scores based on the 2021 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

Last year’s version as well as older data releases of the PTS will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

Notes:

This year we received a number of inquiries about how we code human rights conditions in conflict zones and specifically how the war between Russia and the Ukraine is treated by coders. To answer this question, I want to refer the user to our PTS-Codebook. PTS coders are instructed to code physical integrity rights violations perpetrated by state actors within the “state” of interest’s territorial boundaries. As such, physical integrity rights violations perpetrated by Russian forces inside of the Ukraine are not coded. They appear neither in Ukraine’s PTS-score nor in Russia’s. Ukraine’s PTS-score only accounts for violations perpetrated by Ukrainian state actors inside of Ukraine. Similarly, Russia’s PTS-score only captures violations perpetrated by Russian state actors inside of Russia. Russian perpetrated violations in the Ukraine or Syria are not coded just like U.S. perpetrated violations in Iraq or Afghanistan are not coded by the PTS. We also do not code human rights violations in Eastern Ukraine by Russian sponsored separatists, as we do not deem them to be state actors. Matters become a bit more tricky when coding the U.S. State Department’s report for Crimea. Crimea, not unlike Western Sahara, Palestine, Puerto Rico, or Taiwan is treated as an entity whose statehood or status is contested by some UN member states. However, every year the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch publish reports for some of these territories or entities and we do ask coders to assign PTS scores to these reports. For cases such as these, we ask coders to determine who should count as the de-facto state actor and to code violations accordingly. In the case of Russian occupied Crimea, we treat Russian authorities operating inside of Crimea as the state actor and Crimea’s PTS score as such accounts only for violations perpetrated by Russian authorities in Crimea. Importantly, violations perpetrated by Russian authorities in Crimea are not taken into account to assign the PTS-score for Russia.

2021 PTS Release

2021-10-14T00:00:00-04:00

We are releasing the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. The newly released scores cover human rights conditions in countries and territories for the year 2020.

Figure 1: Annual Average Human Rights Scores

This year’s release includes:

149 PTS scores based on the 2020 Amnesty International Report 2020/21: The State of the World’s Human Rights.
102 PTS scores based on the 2020 Human Rights Watch World Report 2020.
196 PTS scores based on the 2020 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
108 PTS scores based on U.S. State Department reports that had not previously been coded.

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

Notes:

Last year’s version will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive.

We added the final batch of 108 PTS_S scores based on previously uncoded U.S. State Department reports. As such our data release now provides a PTS_S for every State Department report published since 1976.
- Andorra 1993
- Andorra 1998
- Andorra 2007
- Andorra 2008
- Andorra 2009
- Andorra 2010
- Andorra 2011
- Andorra 2013
- Antigua and Barbuda 2003
- Antigua and Barbuda 2007
- Antigua and Barbuda 2013
- Belize 1982
- Belize 1984
- Belize 1987
- Bhutan 1979
- Central African Republic 1984
- Central African Republic 1986
- Dominica 1980
- Dominica 1981
- Dominica 1984
- Dominica 1985
- Dominica 1986
- Dominica 1990
- Dominica 1993
- Dominica 1994
- Dominica 1998
- Dominica 2004
- Dominica 2006
- Dominica 2007
- Equatorial Guinea 1980
- Germany 1996
- Guinea-Bissau 1980
- Guinea-Bissau 1984
- Kiribati 2001
- Kiribati 2002
- Kiribati 2003
- Kiribati 2005
- Kiribati 2007
- Kiribati 2008
- Kiribati 2011
- Kuwait 1980
- Lebanon 1984
- Lebanon 1986
- Lebanon 1988
- Liechtenstein 2000
- Liechtenstein 2005
- Liechtenstein 2007
- Liechtenstein 2011
- Liechtenstein 2013
- Marshall Islands 1999
- Marshall Islands 2000
- Marshall Islands 2001
- Marshall Islands 2004
- Marshall Islands 2011
- Marshall Islands 2012
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2000
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2003
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2005
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2006
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2012
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2013
- Monaco 1994
- Monaco 1998
- Monaco 2004
- Monaco 2007
- Monaco 2008
- Monaco 2011
- Nauru 1999
- Nauru 2000
- Nauru 2003
- Nauru 2005
- Nauru 2006
- Nauru 2011
- Palau 1999
- Palau 2008
- Palau 2009
- Palau 2012
- Palau 2013
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2003
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2009
- Samoa 2005
- Samoa 2006
- San Marino 2003
- San Marino 2012
- Slovenia 1993
- Slovenia 1994
- Slovenia 1995
- Tonga 1999
- Tonga 2001
- Tonga 2002
- Tonga 2004
- Tonga 2006
- Tonga 2007
- Tonga 2008
- Tuvalu 1994
- Tuvalu 1996
- Tuvalu 2001
- Tuvalu 2006
- Tuvalu 2011
- Western Sahara 1996
- Western Sahara 1997
- Western Sahara 1998
- Western Sahara 2000
- Western Sahara 2003
- Western Sahara 2004
- Western Sahara 2006
- Western Sahara 2008
- Western Sahara 2010

Again, past releases (i.e., 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020) of the PTS dataset can be found here: Data-Archive

SVS Website Launch

2021-10-13T00:00:00-04:00

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new standalone website for the Societal Violence Scale (SVS). This sister project of the PTS seeks to measure human rights violations perpetrated by non-state actors in countries and territories across the globe based on information contained in the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights reports. SVS remains housed at the University of North Carolina, Asheville but we thought it was time to give the project its own presence on the web. All SVS data, documentation, and other information can be found at: societalviolencescale.org.

In addition to being accessible at societalviolencescale.org, you can continue to download the latest release of the SVS scores here on the PTS website: Data Download

2020 PTS Release

2020-09-13T00:00:00-04:00

We are releasing the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. This year, Amnesty International again published reports covering countries across the globe. However, these annual reports had to be retrieved separately on Amnesty’s website (see: Country Reports) and were not part of the usual “Amnesty International Report: The State of the World’s Human Rights.” We nevertheless coded these reports published individually online and included the scores with this data release.

Figure 1: Annual Average Human Rights Scores

This year’s release includes:

153 PTS scores based on the 2020 Amnesty International Country Reports.
96 PTS scores based on the 2020 Human Rights Watch World Report 2020.
196 PTS scores based on the 2020 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
200 PTS scores based on U.S. State Department reports that had not previously been coded.

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

Notes:

Last year’s version will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive.

We added a new territory: Somaliland, as it received its own report as part of Human Rights Watch’s annual report.
We added PTS_S scores based on previously uncoded U.S. State Department reports for the following 200 report-years:
- Albania 1979
- Andorra 1996
- Andorra 1997
- Andorra 2000
- Andorra 2001
- Andorra 2003
- Andorra 2005
- Andorra 2012
- Antigua and Barbuda 1999
- Antigua and Barbuda 2000
- Antigua and Barbuda 2001
- Antigua and Barbuda 2002
- Antigua and Barbuda 2004
- Antigua and Barbuda 2005
- Antigua and Barbuda 2008
- Antigua and Barbuda 2009
- Antigua and Barbuda 2010
- Antigua and Barbuda 2012
- Belize 1981
- Belize 1985
- Belize 1986
- Cabo Verde 2014
- Cambodia 1979
- Central African Republic 1980
- Central African Republic 1981
- Central African Republic 1982
- Central African Republic 1983
- Central African Republic 1985
- Chad 1983
- Cyprus 1978
- Dominica 1982
- Dominica 1983
- Dominica 1987
- Dominica 1988
- Dominica 1991
- Dominica 1995
- Dominica 1996
- Dominica 1997
- Dominica 1999
- Dominica 2000
- Dominica 2001
- Dominica 2002
- Dominica 2003
- Dominica 2005
- Dominica 2008
- Dominica 2009
- Dominica 2010
- Dominica 2011
- Equatorial Guinea 1979
- Equatorial Guinea 1984
- Equatorial Guinea 1992
- Fiji 1979
- Fiji 1988
- Fiji 1990
- Fiji 1992
- France 1996
- Guinea-Bissau 1992
- Japan 1996
- Kiribati 2000
- Kiribati 2006
- Kiribati 2009
- Kiribati 2010
- Kiribati 2012
- Kiribati 2013
- Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of 1996
- Kuwait 1984
- Kuwait 1992
- Lebanon 1980
- Lebanon 1983
- Lebanon 1985
- Lebanon 1987
- Lebanon 1989
- Liechtenstein 1999
- Liechtenstein 2000
- Liechtenstein 2002
- Liechtenstein 2003
- Liechtenstein 2004
- Liechtenstein 2006
- Liechtenstein 2008
- Liechtenstein 2009
- Liechtenstein 2010
- Liechtenstein 2012
- Marshall Islands 2002
- Marshall Islands 2003
- Marshall Islands 2005
- Marshall Islands 2006
- Marshall Islands 2007
- Marshall Islands 2008
- Marshall Islands 2009
- Marshall Islands 2010
- Marshall Islands 2013
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2001
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2002
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2007
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2008
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2009
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2010
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2011
- Monaco 1993
- Monaco 1995
- Monaco 1996
- Monaco 1997
- Monaco 1999
- Monaco 2000
- Monaco 2001
- Monaco 2002
- Monaco 2004
- Monaco 2006
- Monaco 2009
- Monaco 2012
- Monaco 2013
- Mongolia 1979
- Mongolia 1981
- Mongolia 1982
- Mongolia 1984
- Mongolia 1985
- Mongolia 1986
- Mongolia 1987
- Montenegro 2007
- Namibia 1982
- Namibia 1983
- Nauru 2001
- Nauru 2002
- Nauru 2004
- Nauru 2007
- Nauru 2008
- Nauru 2009
- Nauru 2010
- Nauru 2012
- Nauru 2013
- Oman 1992
- Palau 2002
- Palau 2003
- Palau 2004
- Palau 2011
- Papua New Guinea 1980
- Papua New Guinea 1984
- Papua New Guinea 1992
- Rwanda 1980
- Rwanda 1984
- Rwanda 1992
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 1999
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2000
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2001
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2002
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2004
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2005
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2006
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2007
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2008
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2010
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2011
- Saint Kitts and Nevis 2013
- San Marino 1999
- San Marino 2000
- San Marino 2001
- San Marino 2002
- San Marino 2005
- San Marino 2006
- San Marino 2007
- San Marino 2008
- San Marino 2009
- San Marino 2011
- San Marino 2013
- Serbia 2006
- Slovenia 1992
- Slovenia 1996
- Taiwan, Province of China 2004
- Tonga 2000
- Tonga 2003
- Tonga 2009
- Tonga 2010
- Tonga 2011
- Tonga 2012
- Tonga 2013
- Tuvalu 1991
- Tuvalu 1992
- Tuvalu 1995
- Tuvalu 1997
- Tuvalu 1998
- Tuvalu 1999
- Tuvalu 2000
- Tuvalu 2002
- Tuvalu 2003
- Tuvalu 2004
- Tuvalu 2005
- Tuvalu 2007
- Tuvalu 2008
- Tuvalu 2009
- Tuvalu 2010
- Tuvalu 2012
- Tuvalu 2013
- Western Sahara 1999
- Western Sahara 2001
- Western Sahara 2002
- Western Sahara 2005
- Western Sahara 2007
- Western Sahara 2012
- Western Sahara 2013
- Yemen People’s Republic 1989

Again, past releases (i.e., 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019) of the PTS dataset can be found here: Data-Archive

2019 PTS Release

2019-08-14T00:00:00-04:00

We are releasing the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. Importantly and as in 2014, Amnesty International did not publish its full Annual Report this year and only provided reports for 19 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (see: Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Review of 2018). We coded these 19 reports and included them in this data release. Amnesty International informed us that they hope to publish reports for the Middle East and North Africa again next year and hope to add other regional reports in the future. However, according to Amnesty International’s Richard Swingler, “current expectations are that, for the moment, we will NOT be publishing the global combined annual report in the future, though this is subject to internal discussions” (emphasis added).

Figure 1a and 1b: Global Human Rights Conditions by Year and Population

Figure 1a (left): Shown are annual average PTS scores. Averages for PTS_A are in red, PTS_H in green, and averages based on the U.S. State Department reports are in blue.
Figure 1b (right): Shown are population weighted annual average PTS_S scores. Countries with larger populations (e.g., China, India) are weighted more in the average than the scores for small micro-states (e.g., Nauru, Liechtenstein). Population data are taken from the World Bank.

This year’s data release covers events that took place between 1976 and 2018 and in a combined 211 countries and territories. Figure 1a above, shows the annual average PTS scores over the period. What is noteworthy, is the spike of the PTS score based on Amnesty International’s report. On its face, the trend (for PTS_A) indicates a dramatic worsening of human rights conditions. This, however, is misleading, when considering that only 19 countries in the Middle East and North Africa contribute to the 2018 average. These 19 countries, do not constitute a random sample and in fact all hail from one of the world’s most troubled and conflict riddled regions.

Figure 1b shows the population weighted annual average PTS scores based on the U.S. State Department reports from 1985 to 2018.¹ What this figure illustrates is that human rights conditions experienced by the average person globally are much worse than the conditions implied by unweighted annual averages (an average of about 3.5 in 2018 compared to the unweighted PTS_S average of about 2.4). Put differently, more people live in countries with poor human rights records (e.g., China or India) than in countries that experience low levels of state perpetrated human rights violations (e.g., Denmark or Canada). While 38 out of 197 (19.3%) countries or territories perpetrate flagrant human rights abuses and received PTS_S scores of 4 or 5 in 2018, almost 70% of the world’s population inhabit these countries and territories. As shown in Table 1, the vast majority of the world’s population faces severe threats to their basic human rights.

**Table 1:** Distribution of 2018 **PTS_S** Scores
2018 PTS_S Score	Number of Countries	Percentage of Countries	Population	Percentage of Population
	62	31.47%	613,843,363	8.49%
	48	24.37%	517,040,094	7.15%
	49	24.87%	1,051,381,496	14.54%
	27	13.71%	4,656,974,847	64.41%
	11	5.58%	390,893,377	5.41%
Total	197	100%	7,230,133,177	100%

The proportion of the world’s population experiencing varying levels of human rights conditions is represented in Figure 2. The left most panel shows the proportion of the the world’s inhabitants living in a country with good human rights records (a PTS_S score of 1). Since the mid-1980 about 10% of the world’s inhabitants experience no or low threats to physical integrity rights. What is striking, are the trends observed in panels 3 and 4. While nearly 45% of the world’s population lived in a country with middling human rights conditions (a PTS_S score of 3) in 1985, by the year 2000 this percentage had dropped to below 20%. “Only” about a quarter of the world’s population lived in a country with a PTS_S score of 4 in 1985. At the turn of the millennium, this percentage had skyrocketed to above 60% indicating a dramatic worsening of human rights conditions for well over a quarter of the world’s population.

Figure 2: Shown in the panels are the proportions of the world's population living in a country with a PTS_S score of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Smoothed trend-lines are shown in red. Population data are taken from the World Bank.

These and other trends can and deserve to be explored further. Newly, included in this year’s release are PTS_S scores for a random sample of 49 countries/territories from prior years whose reports had not been coded at the time. Most of these scores are for micro-states such as Andorra, Dominica, or Palau but also include Iran 1978, Chad 1981, and Mongolia 1989 and 1990. (For a complete list see below or consult the Release Notes). We hope to continue to back-code over 400 other missing scores over the next few years.

This year’s release includes:

19 PTS scores based on the 2019 Amnesty International Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Review of 2018.
97 PTS scores based on the 2019 Human Rights Watch World Report.
197 PTS scores based on the 2019 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
49 PTS scores based on U.S. State Department reports that had not previously been coded.

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

Notes:

Last year’s version will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive.

In this release we renamed Swaziland and Macedonia to Eswatini and North Macedonia, respectively.
We added PTS_S scores based on previously uncoded U.S. State Department reports for the following 49 countries and territories:
- Andorra 1994
- Andorra 1995
- Andorra 1999
- Andorra 2002
- Andorra 2004
- Andorra 2006
- Antigua and Barbuda 2006
- Antigua and Barbuda 2011
- Belize 1983
- Bhutan 1980
- Bhutan 1981
- Bhutan 1987
- Chad 1981
- Cyprus 1992
- Cyprus 1993
- Dominica 1989
- Dominica 1992
- Dominica 2012
- Dominica 2013
- Fiji 1989
- Fiji 1991
- Iran 1978
- Kiribati 1999
- Kiribati 2004
- Lebanon 1981
- Lebanon 1982
- Liechtenstein 2001
- Malawi 1987
- Micronesia, Federated States of 2004
- Monaco 2003
- Monaco 2005
- Monaco 2010
- Mongolia 1989
- Mongolia 1990
- Montenegro 2006
- Namibia 1981
- Palau 2000
- Palau 2001
- Palau 2005
- Palau 2006
- Palau 2007
- Palau 2010
- St. Kitts and Nevis 2012
- San Marino 2004
- San Marino 2010
- Tonga 2005
- Tuvalu 1993
- Western Sahara 2009
- Western Sahara 2011

Again, past releases (i.e., 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) of the PTS dataset can be found here: Data-Archive

Population data have been taken from the World Bank and can be found here: https://data.worldbank.org. ↩

2018 PTS Release

2018-12-06T00:00:00-05:00

We are releasing the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. The data release covers events that took place between 1976 and 2017 and in 210 countries and territories. The figure above shows the annual average PTS scores over the period. Considering that the sample of reports does change from year to year, this figure does seem to suggest that human rights conditions have improved slightly since 2016. This year’s release includes:

159 PTS scores based on the 2019 Amnesty International Annual Report on the State of the World’s Human Rights.
92 PTS scores based on the 2018 Human Rights Watch World Report.
196 PTS scores based on the 2018 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

All data, as well as the latest version of the codebook PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

Notes:

Last year’s version will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive but we continue to report three sets of scores this year.

PTS scores based on Amnesty International reports are stored under the header PTS_A
PTS scores based on Human Rights Watch reports are stored under the header PTS_H
PTS scores based on State Department reports are stored under the header PTS_S

We fixed an error. Mexico’s PTS_S score for last year was reported as 2 in some of the versions of the dataset. This was a mistake and has been changed. Mexico’s PTS_S score for that 2016 is a 4.

Again, past releases (i.e., 2014, 2015, 2016) of the PTS dataset can be found here: Data-Archive

Human Rights in Democracies

2017-12-15T00:00:00-05:00

Violations of the right to the physical integrity of the person, such as torture, cruel and unusual punishment, extra-judicial executions, disappearances, and political imprisonment have long been treated as an anomaly in democratically governed societies. In the current literature on human rights, violations of this right are by-and-large seen as the hallmark of autocratic and repressive regimes.

This study takes on this dominant paradigm and shows not only that the common assumption that democratic countries effectively limit human rights abuse is simply wrong, but that its widely accepted theory of what drives human rights violations accounts for only a small part of these abuses at best. Haschke shows that despite the increasing numbers of countries that are democracies, and despite growing numbers of national signatories to international treaties prohibiting human rights abuse, the number of allegations has not declined. This book also demonstrates that the bulk of this abuse, which takes the form of torture and ill-treatment, extra-judicial killings, rape, and the like, is committed against marginal members of society, seeming to reveal environments that enable agents of the state to abuse those with whom they are in contact. This violence is found in democracies and dictatorships alike.

This work will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, human rights and comparative politics.

The book is available from Routledge.

2017 PTS Release

2017-10-11T00:00:00-04:00

Today, we released the PTS Scores based on the most recent human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department. The new scores released today cover events that took place in 2016. As such, we now have PTS scores covering a 41 year period from 1976 to 2016 and 210 countries and territories. The figure above shows the number of countries receiving the worst PTS score of 5. Not since the late 1990s have Amnesty International and U.S. State Department presented such a bleak picture of human rights practices around the world. This release includes:

159 PTS scores based on the 2017 Amnesty International Annual Report on the State of the World’s Human Rights.
89 PTS scores based on the 2017 Human Rights Watch World Report.
196 PTS scores based on the 2017 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

This latest release, which includes all scores going back to 1976, as well as the PTS-Codebook can be accessed here: Download.

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

Changes for this Release

Last year’s version will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv) in our Data-Archive but we continue to report three sets of scores this year.

PTS scores based on Amnesty International reports are stored under the column PTS_A
PTS scores based on Human Rights Watch reports are stored under the column PTS_H
PTS scores based on State Department reports are stored under the column PTS_S

Also last year, we cleaned and updated all country names (Country) and completely overhauled country identifiers/codes while adding new ones. For comparability with past releases, we retained the a column containing the old country names (Country_OLD). This year we added three new indicators:

NA_Status_A
NA_Status_H
NA_Status_S

Each variable contains information pertaining to missing values in the corresponding PTS variables (i.e., PTS_A, PTS_H, and PTS_S). As missingness has been a concern to us as well as users, we coded these three variables to indicate why particular observations are not coded and scores are missing. The most common reason for missing PTS scores are missing reports. Not all reporting agencies publish reports for all countries and territories. For more details and examples please consult the PTS-Codebook.

Again, past releases (i.e., 2014 and 2015) of the PTS dataset can be found here: Data-Archive.

2016 PTS Release

2016-09-09T00:00:00-04:00

160 PTS scores based on the 2016 Amnesty International Annual Report on the State of the World’s Human Rights.
87 PTS scores based on the 2016 Human Rights Watch World Report.
198 PTS scores based on the 2016 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

This latest release, which includes all scores going back to 1976, can be accessed here: Download.

The Data Table on the website and the PTS-App have been updated and also contain the latest scores.

Changes for this Release

Although the dataset will still be available in various formats (i.e., .xlsx, .dta, .RData, and .csv), we have adopted the country-year format across all versions. Specifically, our dataset is structured such that each row represents a particular country-year combination (e.g. Spain 2015). Columns represent the variables of interest.

PTS scores based on Amnesty International reports are stored under the column PTS_A
PTS scores based on Human Rights Watch reports are stored under the column PTS_H
PTS scores based on State Department reports are stored under the column PTS_S

The dataset also contains cleaned and updated country names (Country), as well as completely overhauled country identifiers/codes.

COW_Code_A: The Correlates of War Project (CoW) alphabetic country codes
COW_Code_N: The Correlates of War Project (CoW) numeric country codes
WordBank_Code_A: World Bank three letter country codes (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3)
UN_Code_N: United Nation three digit numeric country codes (ISO 3166-1 numeric-3)
Region: OECD region identifier

For comparability with past releases, we retained the a column containing the old country names (Country_OLD). Past releases (i.e., 2014 and 2015) of the PTS dataset can be found here: Data-Archive.

Upcoming Changes

Over the next few weeks, we hope to update the documentation for this and past data releases and add a complete codebook to accompany the dataset. Stay tuned!

Introducing the Societal Violence Scale (SVS)

2015-08-27T00:00:00-04:00

The Political Terror Scale (PTS) measures levels of physical integrity violations by the state. However, human insecurity is also the result of violence carried out by non-state actors. The Societal Violence Scale (SVS) provides an ordinal measure of non-state violence based on the accounts contained in the annual U.S. State Department reports. The SVS breaks non-state violence into 3 perpetrator groups and 14 vulnerable populations, as follows:

Perpetrator Groups:

Individuals or ad hoc groups
Corporate actors organized for private profit
Organized, armed groups for group benefits

Victims:

Women
Children
National/Ethnic/ and Racial groups
Religious and Sectarian groups
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Sexual Minorities
Forced Labor
Labor Activists
Human Rights Defenders
Humanitarian Workers
Journalists
State Actors
Civilians in Civil Conflict
Others

The initial release (for State Department reports covering events of 2013), the SVS only provides a country’s overall aggregate score, although in subsequent years there will be disaggregated data for each perpetrator and for each victim group. The five levels comprising the SVS aggregate scores are as follows:

Societal Violence Scale Levels

Level	Interpretation
	Societal violence is limited in scope and severity, with relatively few victims and few perpetrators.
	Societal violence is a problem, affecting a significant number of victims, albeit across few victim categories and is less severe in nature.
	Societal violence is widespread and severe in nature. It affects a significant number of people across several victim categories.
	Societal violence is pervasive and severe, affecting a large proportion of the population typically across several victim categories and perpetrators.
	Societal violence is ubiquitous in scope and egregious in nature. If affects a large proportion of the population, crossing numerous victim categories and all categories of perpetrators.

For a more detailed discussion navigate here: The SVS Explained.

Missingness and Comparability of Scores

2015-07-17T00:00:00-04:00

In light of Amnesty International’s decision to not publish a report covering events taking place in 2013, we have received a number of inquiries concerning the comparability of Amnesty International, State Department, and Human Rights Watch scores. Inquiries typically raise the following questions:

Can State Department scores be substituted for missing Amnesty scores?

Should only one set of scores be used or is it better to average across Amnesty, State Department, and HRW scores?

In the past we have responded to these questions with a fair amount of hand-waving. We suggested that there are no clear answers and recommended that scholars err on the side of caution. Adding to the ambiguity, our main data release includes average scores for each year (PTS2014.xls). I here want to advocate for a more cautious approach and highlight that averaging scores to deal with missing values is likely problematic.

It is worth remembering that the Political Terror Scale aims to produce a standards-based measure of states’ physical integrity rights abuse. To produce this measure, we rely on annual reports published by Amnesty International, the U.S. State Department, and more recently Human Rights Watch. For each set of reports we code separate scores. PTS-A is coded relying exclusively on the reports published by Amnesty International. PTS-S relies only on the State Department reports and PTS-H on reports by Human Rights Watch.

While we believe that the resulting scores provide a good indication of the state of physical integrity rights in a given country for a given year, we cannot make the claim that they represent the true state of a country’s human rights practices. In other words, scores represent the state of human rights as reported by a given reporting organization. Amnesty, for example may report abuses which are not mentioned in the State Department’s report. The State Department could focus on areas which did not receive the attention of Human Rights Watch. By and large then, PTS scores are a reflection of human rights records as seen and reported by the reporting organization. They may approximate the “truth” but they likely contain some amount of subjectivity or bias depending on each organization’s mandate, focus, agenda, monitoring capacity, and/or resource constraints.

Whether scores are comparable thus depends on one’s assumptions about these potential reporting biases. What follows below is a comparison of PTS scores based on Amnesty International and U.S. State Department reports. As we only have two years worth of Human Rights Watch scores, they are not considered in the discussion. We do expect, however, that some of the patterns we find, as well as the conclusions we reach, apply similarly to PTS scores based on the reports published by Human Rights Watch.

Figure 1, shows average PTS scores for both Amnesty International and the State Department. For the purpose of this comparison, only countries for which both an Amnesty and a State Department score is available, were considered. As can be seen, for the period from 1976 to about 1990, the State Department average was consistently lower than the average for Amnesty scores. In other words Amnesty’s reports were perhaps overly “harsh” or critical compared to the State Department’s. Alternatively, it could be that the State Department was particularly lenient or uncritical. Since then yearly averages have converged, with the average of State Department scores being slightly higher in recent years.

Figure 1: Amnesty and State Department Scores over Time

Figure 1: Shown are smoothed annual averages for PTS scores for Amnesty International and the State Department reports. Only country-year observations, for which both Amnesty and State Department scores exist, are considered (N = 4853).

Some have argued that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International have incentives to consistently report bad news even if states’ human rights records improve (Simmons 2009). If human rights records across the world improve sufficiently, Amnesty International’s ability to mobilize members and attract donations would arguably be eroded. In short, Amnesty International has an incentive to change its standards, or to focus its attention to violations ignored in the past to remain relevant. Incentives to strategically adjust reporting standards may also be a problem for the U.S. State Department’s annual reports and these reports have been criticized, as well. Its reports were allegedly biased in their content to make U.S. allies and U.S. foreign aid recipients appear more favorable (Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Carey, and Vazquez 2001).

Replacing a missing Amnesty score prior to 1990 with one based on the State Department source material is thus problematic. Even more recent scores (from 1990 onward) may not be substitutable. Consider Figure 2a and Figure 2b.

Figure 2a and 2b: Overall Differences and Differences by Year

Figure 2a (left): Shown are the differences between PTS-S and PTS-A for the entire period from 1976 to 2012. Only observations for which both scores are available are included in the calculations (N = 4853).
Figure 2b (right): Shown is the proportion of observations in a given year for which there is disagreement between the Amnesty and State Department score.

The differences between State Department and Amnesty scores (for the 4853 observations for which both scores exist), are generally not more than one level or category. For 58 percent of the observations, the State Department and Amnesty scores are identical. For about 39 percent of the observations scores are different by one category or level (e.g. PTS-S = 4 and PTS-A = 3). Only for about 3 percent of observations is the difference between the two scores larger than one category. For a quarter of the cases Amnesty scores are higher (worse) than the State Department’s. Amnesty scores are lower for 17 percent of the observations.

It is important to note that these differences are not limited to the pre-1990 period. Disagreement remains substantial for more recent scores. As can be seen in Figure 2b, there is a high amount of disagreement between State Department and Amnesty scores prior to the 1990s – peaking in 1978 when the two PTS scales were in agreement for only 25 percent of the coded observations. Even after 1990, however, disagreement remains relatively high, fluctuating about 40 percent. Assuming disagreement is not random, this calls uncritical averaging and or substitution of scores into question.

The case against averaging is further strengthened when considering disagreement of PTS scores by country. Consider the histogram presented in Figure 3. Shown is distribution of the average differences by country.

Figure 3: Shown is a histogram of average differences between PTS-S and PTS-A for the entire period from 1976 to 2012 by country (N = 178).

As should be expected the average differences cluster around zero. As such, for most countries, differences in scores appear random and cancel each other out. The State Department score for Country X may be high compared to the Amnesty score in one year but is lower in another – so on average the scores are in agreement. For a substantial number of countries, however, Amnesty scores are consistently higher (left tail of the figure) or consistently lower (right tail). This is troubling news for those seeking to replace missing scores for these countries.

To add some substance to the discussion, below find the results of comparing the two measures (PTS-S and PTS-A) for each country by means of a set of paired t-tests. Paired t-tests allow for a quick and dirty evaluation of ratings or biases of two raters (in our case two reporting agencies – Amnesty International and the State Department). Presented are the average differences of PTS-S and PTS-A scores by country, as well as 90 percent confidence intervals.

Countries, with dots on the right side of the red line (indicating no differences in scores), receive on average higher (worse) State Department scores. Countries with dots left of the red line, receive higher (worse) Amnesty scores. Magenta colored dots indicate that these differences are statistically discernible from zero (i.e. Amnesty scores are significantly lower or the State Department scores significantly higher). Blue colored dots indicate the opposite (i.e. Amnesty scores are significantly higher or the State Department scores significantly lower).

Figure 4: Amnesty and State Department Scores over Time

Figure 1: Shown are average differences of PTS scores by country as well as 90 percent confidence intervals. Countries with fewer than 5 observations have been omitted.

The results presented above do suggest that disagreement of scores is limited to a set of specific countries. The State Department’s reports are arguably more critical of former Eastern Bloc countries (e.g. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia, and Russia). Other perhaps unsurprising examples include Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, and Nicaragua. Amnesty, on the other hand, appears to be more critical of prominent U.S. allies such as West Germany, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

The take-away should be plain. Replacing missing scores and averaging of the two (three) scales is likely problematic. Scholars ought to take great care to justify either approach and evaluate on a case by case basis if and when Political Terror Scale scores are indeed comparable. The above results suggest that it is unlikely that the bias in one of the scales can easily be “fixed” or “washed out” by replacing it with the existing score of the other scale.

Extreme care should also be taken when interpreting scores as representations of the true human rights conditions in a given country. It is safer to rather view them as representations of human rights records from the perspectives of varying monitoring organizations.

Both PTS-A and PTS-S present a biased view of physical integrity rights violations – this is especially likely for the 1970s and early to mid 1980s. Yet, even with almost 40 years worth of data these biases remain problematic.

References:

Poe, Steven C., Sabine C. Carey, and Tanya C. Vazquez. 2001. “How Are These Pictures Different? A Quantitative Comparison of the US State Department and Amnesty International Human Rights Reports, 1976-1995.” Human Rights Quarterly 23(3): 650–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4489351
Poe, Steven C., and C. Neal Tate. 1994. “Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis.” The American Political Science Review 88(4): 853. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2082712
Simmons, Beth A. 2009. Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

New Amnesty International Annual Reports

2015-07-01T00:00:00-04:00

Since the inception of the Political Terror Scale, the annual Amnesty International Report has served as one of our two sources of data, the other being the annual State Department Report. In that way the PTS has made use of data from both a non-state (AI) source and a state (SD) human rights report. Unfortunately, and for reasons that have never been made clear, at least publicly, AI did not publish an annual report in year 2014. One thing to be noted about the AI report is that the title refers to the year of publication, although the events being reported on occur the year before. Thus, there was no 2014 annual report, which would have analyzed events in 2013.

Our great fear was that Amnesty International had decided to cease publishing an annual report and in order to gain the perspective of a non-state actor we coded the Human Rights Watch annual report for events occurring in 2013. We have posted those on this site but have not sought to substitute these scores for the missing – or what appeared to be missing – AI scores.

Much to our surprise and delight, in June 2015 Amnesty International published a joint 2014/2015 report, which analyzes events from 2013 and 2014, although there is a decided emphasis on the more recent year. We have posted these scores under 2014 and decided to leave 2013 blank on the basis that there simply is not enough information about 2013 to warrant a separate category. However, we sincerely hope that this was a momentary blip and that the annual Amnesty International reports will continue to be published and to serve as a vital source of information on states’ human rights practices.

The SAGE Handbook of Human Rights

2014-08-26T00:00:00-04:00

The SAGE Handbook of Human Rights comprises a two volume set consisting of more than 50 original chapters that clarify and analyze human rights issues of both contemporary and future importance. The Handbook takes an inter-disciplinary approach, combining work in such traditional fields as law, political science and philosophy with such non-traditional subjects as climate change, demography, economics, geography, urban studies, mass communication, and business and marketing. In addition, one of the aspects of mainstreaming is the manner in which human rights has come to play a prominent role in popular culture, and there will be a section on human rights in art, film, music and literature.

Not only will the Handbook provide a state of the art analysis of the discipline that addresses the history and development of human rights standards and its movements, mechanisms and institutions, but it will seek to go beyond this and produce a book that will help lead to prospective thinking.

Endorsements

“This Handbook covers almost every aspect of the present state of human rights studies. Its contributions, drawn from virtually all parts of the world, are of a very high standard. It will be extremely useful for human rights teaching and research.”

Guimei Bai Peking University Law School

“The volumes do well to cover mainstream topics, including major international treaties and institutions and the protection of categories of rights, such as women, LGBTs, and persons with disabilities, among others. The set is also interdisciplinary; the unique chapters on business and economics, climate change, art and music, and even the intersection of human rights with celebrities and sports make it stand out.

This would be a nice addition to reference collections at institutions where human-righrs courses are regularly taught. In addition, educators in political science or law at the undergraduate level would likely find this set a useful resource for preparing classes, with some chapters being assigned as required reading. …

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduate, graduate, and research collections”

A.G. Reiter Mount Holyoke College

The set is available from SAGE.

Watching Human Rights: The 101 Best Films

2014-01-25T00:00:00-05:00

In order to be able to protect human rights, it is first necessary to see the denial of those rights. Aside from experiencing human rights violations directly, either as a victim or as an eyewitness, more than any other medium film is able to bring us closer to this aspect of the human experience. Yet, notwithstanding its importance to human rights, film has received virtually no scholarly attention and thus one of the primary goals of this book is to begin to fill this gap. From an historical perspective, human rights were not at all self-evident by reason alone, but had to gain standing through an appeal to human emotions found in novels as well as in works of moral philosophy and legal theory. Although literature continues to play an important role in the human rights project, film is able to take us that much further, by universalizing the particular experience of others different from ourselves, the viewers. Watching Human Rights analyzes more than 100 of the finest human rights films ever made—documentaries, feature films, faux documentaries, animations, and even cartoons. It will introduce the reader to a wealth of films that might otherwise remain unknown, but it also shows the human rights themes in films that all of us are familiar with.

Covers more than 100 beloved and lesser-known films
Focuses on human rights abuses and inspirations
Savvy author reviews films for Human Rights Quarterly and has won awards for scholarship and teaching on human rights
Author uses The Universal Declaration of Rights as framework to discuss human rights themes in film
Includes photos from feature and documentary films keyed to human rights principles

Endorsements

“Mark Gibney has not only collected 101 films that challenge us to empathize and mobilize, he has woven their plots into the larger story of the human rights movement, showing how each illustrates a part of the struggle for human dignity.”

Reed Brody, Human Rights Watch

“Whether you are a film buff, a human rights scholar, or a casual observer of humanity, you will want to absorb this beautiful book. It is approachable and engaging while also frank and unblinking. Like the films in this book, Gibney succeeds in the crucial role of putting human faces on human rights.”

Niklaus Steiner, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

“Mark Gibney has compiled a wonderful list of films–both fiction and documentary–that illustrate the entire range of human rights violations, from torture to poverty to indigenous rights and beyond, with commentary that explains their relevance to international human rights law. The volume is an excellent source for teachers of human rights who want to recommend films to their students. This is a book I’ve wanted for years.”

Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Wilfrid Laurier University

“Today human rights is increasingly studied and understood through images, specifically film. Yet scholars and teachers have lacked an all-in-one guide to the best films on the subject. Mark Gibney’s Watching Human Rights is thus the perfect resource, as it profiles both mainstream films and lesser-known international and independent films and vividly shows how visualizing human suffering or triumph can give us deeper insight into the meaning and significance of human rights.”

Safia Swimelar, Elon University

The book is available from Paradigm Publishers.

Litigating Transnational Human Rights Obligations

2013-10-28T00:00:00-04:00

Human rights have traditionally been framed in a vertical perspective with the duties of States confined to their own citizens or residents. Obligations beyond this territorial space have been viewed as either being absent or minimalistic at best. However, the territorial paradigm has now been seriously challenged in recent years in part because of the increasing awareness of the ability of States and other actors to impact human rights far from home both positively and negatively. In response to this awareness various legal principles have come into existence setting out some transnational human rights obligations of varying degrees. However, notwithstanding these initiatives, judicial institutions and monitoring bodies continue to show an enormous hesitancy in moving beyond a territorial reading of international human rights law.

This book addresses the issue in an innovative and challenging way by crafting legally sound hypothetical “judgments” from a number of adjudicatory fora. The judgments are based on real world situations where extraterritorial or transnational issues have emerged, and draw on existing international human rights law, albeit a progressive interpretation of this law. The book shows that there are a number of judicial and quasi-judicial systems where transnational human rights claims can, and should be enforced. These include: the World Trade Organization; the International Court of Justice; the regional human rights monitoring bodies; domestic courts; and the UN treaty bodies. Each hypothetical judgment is accompanied by detailed commentary placing it in context in order to show how international human rights law can address issues of a transnational character.

The book will be of interest to human scholars and lawyers, practitioners, activists and aid officials.

The book is available from Routledge.

The Politics of Human Rights: The Quest for Dignity

2010-10-30T00:00:00-04:00

Human rights is an important issue in contemporary politics, and the last few decades have also seen a remarkable increase in research and teaching on the subject. This book introduces students to the study of human rights and aims to build on their interest while simultaneously offering an alternative vision of the subject. Many texts focus on the theoretical and legal issues surrounding human rights. This book adopts a substantially different approach which uses empirical data derived from research on human rights by political scientists to illustrate the occurrence of different types of human rights violations across the world. The authors devote attention to rights as well as to responsibilities, neither of which stops at one country’s political borders. They also explore how to deal with repression and the aftermath of human rights violations, making students aware of the prospects for and realities of progress.

Focuses on real-word events to demonstrate applicability and encourage students to connect theory with practice
Each chapter provides a list of films and novels linked to the topics covered, providing a resource for instructors to engage students with the topic of human rights in a novel way
Discusses not just human rights violations, but how repression and its aftermath can be dealt with, making students aware of the ways progress can be made

Endorsements

‘This is the first true human rights textbook. It is comprehensive, has a consistent voice, and introduces students to quantitative approaches to the global, comparative study of human rights. Chapters conclude with suggestions for further reading, relevant websites and films - all with valuable annotations by the authors.’

David Cingranelli, Binghamton University, SUNY

‘Carey, Gibney and Poe explain clearly and accessibly how human rights work, grounding their argument solidly in empirical research. This book provides a valuable resource for readers seeking to deepen their understanding of this crucially important subject.’

Michael Goodhart, University of Pittsburgh

‘The Politics of Human Rights is an innovative, challenging and truly social-scientific treatment of the topic. It is the full tour, from philosophical origins to the post-violation cleanup, replete with examples and, adding to its appeal, complete with an informed guide to relevant films.’

Neil J. Mitchell, University of Aberdeen

The book is available from Cambridge University Press.