25 April 2012 (BNS)

The New York based Freedom House once again ranked Estonia among free countries in its fresh annual survey of political rights and civil liberties, Freedom in the World 2012.

Just like last year, Estonia's political rights score and civil liberties score were both 1. The same scores were given to most members of the European Union.

Latvia meanwhile received two points for political rights and civil liberties alike. Lithuania's scores were the same as Estonia's.

Russia's political rights score was 6 and civil liberties score 5, unchanged from 2011, putting it in the Not Free category.

The number of countries ranked in the latest survey is 195 and of them 87 were designated as Free, 60 as Partly Free and 48 as Not Free.

Countries ranked as Free are home to 43 percent of the world population, countries ranked as Partly Free to 22 percent and countries ranked as Not Free to 35 percent, Freedom House said.

In the scoreboard published in 2011 there were 194 countries, of which 89 were designated as Free, 58 as Partly Free and 47 as Not Free.