Republic mixed reviews—generally poor but in a few ways better than the United States.
The survey published Monday is the first of its kind. It was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This first report covers just 66 countries. It is planned to expand to 100 countries next year.
The survey rates countries by eight broad factors divided into 46 specific measures.
Iran is rated the worst in the world so far as “Fundamental Rights” are concerned. It scores an absolute zero on the measure of “arbitrary interference of privacy” and barely above zero for “freedom of opinion and expression,” “freedom of belief and religion,” and “freedom of assembly and association.”
Iran also rates abysmally in terms of the stability of laws and the public availability of official information—despite the fact that the regime crows about how transparent it is.
But Iran rates above the middle on access to civil justice—which is the category where the United States got its lowest rating. In fact, the Islamic Republic was rated better than the United States on three of the 46 measures—all of them dealing with civil justice. In the civil justice system, Iranians can access legal counsel better, can afford civil courts more easily and are not subject to as many unreasonable delays as in the United States.
Iran gets a perfect score in one category—for having a strong police force that effectively limits civil conflict. However, all the Middle Eastern countries that were measured also got perfect scores in that category.
The brief written comment on Iran said in full: “Iran’s law enforcement is relatively strong, but often used as an instrument to perpetuate abuses. Government accountability is weak—ranking 59th globally and last within the region—and corruption is prevalent. Courts, although fairly efficient, are subject to corruption and political interference. Another area of serious concern is the situation of fundamental rights, where the country ranks last in the world.”
The full report of the “World Justice Project Rule of Law Index” is available at http://world justicereport.org/sites/default/files/WJPROLI2011_0.pdf.