Freedom House, the Washington-based non-profit research organization, released this week its latest report titled “Freedom on the Net 2022: Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet”, unveiling a harsh decline in internet freedom for the 12^th consecutive year amid an unprecedented assault on free expression online. The report mentioned that the internet has witnessed further fragmentation as a result of the increasing state intervention in the last year. In this vein, the report commented that there are three main reasons for the fragmentation which have resulted in a drop in human rights online, namely the restriction of flow of news & information, the centralized state control over internet infrastructure, and barriers to cross-border transfers of user data. In addition, the report noted that authorities in 47 out of 70 countries covered in the index have reduced users’ access to information.

On a global level, out of the 70 countries assessed, 28 registered drops in internet freedom while only 26 countries have reported improvements. The internet freedom report assesses 89% of the world’s internet users. The sharpest declines were in Russia, Myanmar, Sudan and Libya with Gambia and Zimbabwe recording the best improvement in their scores. The report revealed that internet freedom in Russia has dropped by 7 points following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In addition, the report revealed that weeks after the start of the invasion, Russia blocked social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) on residents in Russia thereby limiting their access to reliable information about the war. Furthermore, and as depicted by the table below, Iceland, Estonia, Costa Rica, Canada, and Taiwan (in a descending order) topped the list of countries in internet freedom while Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, and China bottomed the list being the year’s worst abusers of internet freedom. Overall, 37% of the total world population was classified as living in “not free” countries, 34% in “partly free” countries, and 18% in “free” countries, noting that 11% of the world countries were not assessed.

On a local basis, the report positioned Lebanon among countries having a “partly free” internet environment, assigning it a score of 51 (on a scale of 0 to 100) for the year 2022, unchanged from the previous year. In details, Lebanon scored 11 (on a scale of 0 to 25) in the “Obstacles to Access” component, 22 (on a scale of 0 to 35) in the “Limits on Content” metric, and 18 (on a scale of 0 to 40) in the “Violations of User Rights” parameter. Consequently, Lebanon ranked 37^th (compared to the 38^th position held in the previous year) in the world and 2^nd in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in terms of internet freedom. In details, the report stated that internet freedom in Lebanon remained weak during the period extending between June 1, 2021 and May 31, 2022. The report mentioned that the ongoing economic crisis has created large financial impediments for internet service providers and users, with the government announcing its plan to increase the price of telecommunication services which could reduce internet access to several providers and individuals. Finally, the report noted that several social media users were called upon by the Cybercrimes Bureau and asked to delete some online content.