The St. Lucia government Tuesday welcomed the island’s ranking of countries globally for political rights and civil liberties.
A government statement said that St. Lucia received a score of 91 out of 100 in Freedom House’s 2026 Freedom in the World assessment, which measures political rights and civil liberties, including the electoral process, political participation, freedom of expression, the rule of law and individual rights. It said that the score places the island among the highest-scoring countries in the Caribbean and globally. Among the countries highlighted in the ranking were Finland (100), Barbados (94), Dominica (92), St. Vincent received a score of 90 and the United States (81).
In its publication under the heading ‘Americas,’ the US-based Freedom House, said that major threats to freedom in the Americas during 2025 included criminal violence and mounting restrictions on civic space.
It said that although the region features some of the freest countries in the world, only six countries earned score improvements for the year, while12 registered score declines.
El Salvador recorded the region’s largest score decline for the second consecutive year, due in part to the abolition of presidential term limits, while ‘persistent strife in Haiti further delayed long-overdue elections and restricted the mobility of citizens, resulting in additional declines in Haiti’s score’.
Elsewhere in the region, officials in Suriname implemented recent election reforms that established a one-person, one-vote system and allowed smaller parties to gain representation, and citizens in Jamaica faced less harassment and intimidation during the 2025 general elections than in some previous years’ balloting, Freedom House added.