The Human Rights Risk Atlas for 2011 was released on Friday, the International Human Rights Day. The atlas evaluates 196 countries on their performance across 30 human rights categories, which cover human security, labor standards and protections, civil and political rights and access to remedy.
This is the fifth consecutive year that the atlas has been published by the British global advisory firm Maplecroft. According to the atlas, there are now 92 countries in the ‘extreme’ and ‘high risk’ categories as opposed to 83 last year, a rise of nearly 10%. Not surprisingly the ten worst offenders of human rights are as follows: DR Congo (1), Somalia (2), Pakistan (3), Sudan (4), Myanmar (5), Chad (6), Afghanistan (7), Zimbabwe (8), and North Korea (9) and China fell two places from last year’s ranking into tenth place. It is notable that these rankings were released on the day when China would not allow its’ citizens to see the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony because Chinese political prisoner Liu was being honored. China is ranked worst or joint bottom of the league in several key classes.
These include violation categories such as freedom of speech, the press and religion, minority rights, judicial independence, and arbitrary arrest and detention. The country also ranked bottom for trafficking and forced labor violations and scored 0.02 out of a possible 10 for child labor.Labor rights violations are routine in China due to weak and inconsistent enforcement of labor laws. However, with the introduction of new Labor Contract Law in 2008, the situation is slowly set to change as Chinese work forces demand improved pay and conditions. The Chinese government reportedly monitors and harasses labor rights organizations and political opponents. Lawyers are disbarred for taking on politically sensitive cases and victims of human rights abuses are obstructed in seeking damages. China’s performance is compounded by the actions of state security forces acting with impunity, which are reported to take part in extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests.
The U.S. was ranked as having a "medium risk" and was ranked at 131. France (152), United Kingdom (154), Canada (172) and Germany (181) were rated low risk.
