AHMAD AL-BASHA/AFP/Getty Images
A photo taken on March 18, 2018, shows a Yemeni child looking out at buildings that were damaged in an air strike in the southern Yemeni city of Taez.
- Though freedom can seem difficult to capture in concrete terms, international human rights watchdog group Freedom House seeks to do just that each year.
- The organization's annual "Freedom in the World" report considers a number of social and political factors facing citizens in countries across the world.
- The countries and territories that are called "not free" often include oppressive conditions, including lack of fair elections, crackdowns on freedoms of expression, and repressive political regimes.
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Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization, releases its Freedom in the World report each year to compare the political and social conditions citizens face in countries and territories across the world.
Each country's score is calculated considering a number of factors and assigned a number out of 100, ranking each entity from "free," "partly free," to "not free."
The United States is considered free with a score of 86/100, ranking behind 51 out of the 87 "free" countries that scored up to 100/100.
The countries counted as "not free" are those that fail to hold valid elections, don't have active independent media, and do not endow their citizens with basic civil rights.
Here are the 56 countries the Freedom House report says are "not free," and why.