The non-governmental organization Freedom House, which conducts research on the current state of political rights and civil liberties, published its annual report of 2013, according to which Nagorny Karabakh improved its rating thus moving from “not free” country to “partly free”. This change, according to the organization’s report, is mainly stipulated by the competitive presidential elections held in the NKR in July 2012, which were the fifth in succession.

Freedom House assesses the policy of the authorities of the world’s states per two criteria: political rights and civil liberties. Each of these dimensions is assessed on a scale from 1 (maximum) to 7 (minimum). According to both criteria, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic got “5”.

The NKR used to be included in the reports of Freedom House and was generally assessed as “partly free”.

The full version of the Freedom House report is available at: https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FIW%202013%20Booklet.pdf