Source: Tanjug

WASHINGTON -- Freedom House NGO has given Serbia a status of a free country in its annual Freedom in the World 2012 report.

Countries of the region have been categorized as free and partly free countries. Serbia is in a group of free countries that have political competition, respect civil rights and freedoms and have independent media.

When it comes to the region, aside from Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro have also been given a status of free countries.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo, which was rated separately from Serbia, are classified as partly free due to limited respect of political rights and civil freedoms. They are also plagued by corruption, lack of the rule of law, frequent ethnic and religious conflicts and their political scenes are dominated by a single party despite a certain level of parallelism.

Democracy around the world was in decline in 2012 for the seventh year in a row.

The Freedom House non-governmental organization found 90 countries now enjoyed full freedom, up from 87 nations in 2011, but 27 places saw new restrictions on rights of assembly, expression and the media.

Some three billion people, or 43 percent of the global population, enjoyed full political rights and civil liberties, while 1.6 billion resided in partly free countries, where there is only limited respect for freedoms in place, AFP has reported.

Around 34 percent of the world's population, or 2.3 billion people, however live in countries deemed to be not free.

Russia, Iran and Venezuela were singled out by the report.

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Freedom House assesses Serbia as “free country”