Parliament and Uhuru Park in Nairobi, Kenya. Ninara/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by)
The last few years have not been good to democracy. According to the US think tank Freedom House, 2014 saw a “disturbing decline in global freedom”, with twice as many countries suffering democratic declines as enjoying democratic gains. This problem has not been contained in one region, but has proved to be a much broader phenomenon, from campaigns against media freedom in Egypt and Turkey to homophobic legislation in Africa and sustained conflict in Iraq and Syria. Worryingly, this is the ninth year in a row that a drop in the overall level of freedom has been recorded.
