For Immediate Release
February 2, 2005

Freedom is on the March Throughout the World

A recent report on freedom in the world released by the Freedom House shows that 63 percent of the world's population - over 4 billion people - live in free or partly free countries. While Muslim countries constitute 24 percent of the world's states, they accounted for over a third of the states that made measurable progress in the past year. Over 70 percent of the countries in the world were listed as free or partly free. In the past six months alone, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and the Ukraine all held democratic elections.

Source: The Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org)