GlobalHumanitarianSince 2010Curatedmedium confidence

Democratic Backsliding

More people now live under autocratising governments than democratising ones.

Severity score

47.8

Serious · default weighting

Trajectory

Worsening

What this is

Independent courts, electoral commissions and civil society are being dismantled across a widening set of countries, often through legal means. The trend correlates with worse conflict, corruption and rights outcomes, and reversals are historically rare.

Score breakdown

Loss of life

20

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

88

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

58

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

4

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

76

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.