Human rights have improved in every part of the world, with some backtracking in the past decade.

Judged as of 2024-06-15. True: long-run human rights indices (for example V-Dem's or Fariss's Latent Human Rights Protection Scores) show improvement over recent decades in every world region, with declines in the most recent decade or so. Mostly true: improvement in all or nearly all regions, with one region flat or ambiguous, or the recent backtracking timed slightly differently. Mixed: improvement in about half the regions, or the recent backtracking was large enough to undo much of the earlier gains. Mostly false: improvement in only a minority of regions, or improvement shown only by one dataset while others contradict it. False: no general long-run improvement, or declines in most regions.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Human rights have improved in all world regions over the last century Our World in Data · 14 June 2024

   “As you can see, every world region scored significantly higher in 2023 than 100 years ago.”

2. E2 It's Getting Better All The Time Foreign Policy · 24 November 2015

   “So, the trajectory varies across issues and countries, but in most cases the arc has continued to bend toward a better world.”

3. E3 It's Getting Better All The Time Foreign Policy · 24 November 2015

   “At the global level, the average score on this measure has declined slightly since 1981, the first year CIRI observes.”

4. E4 Human Rights Our World in Data · 12 June 2016

   “Human rights have become much more protected, but this varies a lot between countries.”

E1 shows every world region scored higher in 2023 than a century earlier, but none of the evidence covers the claimed backtracking in the past decade. E3 reports a slight global decline on the CIRI measure since 1981, and nothing in the evidence explains that decline away, so the evidence does not settle the claim under the criteria.