Data Mechanics

Human rights index (V-Dem)

How free people are from state violence, and how far they enjoy basic freedoms, from 0 to 1.

The V-Dem human rights index measures how free people are from government torture, political killings and forced labour, and how far they enjoy property rights and the freedoms of movement, religion, expression and association. It runs from 0 (least free) to 1 (most free) and, like the V-Dem democracy indices, combines the ratings of thousands of country experts through a statistical model. Our World in Data republishes the central estimates.

World map · Human rights index

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

Over time · Human rights index

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

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Every country and year, with the source on each row.

Portrait of Klaus Jürgen Folz

About the author

Hello there, I’m Klaus Jürgen Folz. I studied Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, and I work in Austria as a lead Python and Power BI developer. I built Data Mechanics because good decisions start with facts. Public data is often scattered, hard to find or locked behind paywalls, and too much of what we read about the world is biased. Here, every number is shown as it was published, next to its source, so anyone can check it, compare countries and leaders, and draw their own conclusions.

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