Each year, the human rights watchdog Freedom House surveys all 193 countries in the world, plus 15 select territories, and assesses the state of freedom in each.

During 2007, Freedom House determined that 90 countries (47 per cent) were free. Their governments respected "a broad array of basic human rights and political freedoms."

This is good news. Since these countries also represent nearly one-half of the world's population that means we are approaching the day when a majority of Earth's inhabitants live free.

Since 1977, the number of free countries has doubled.

Another 60 countries (31 per cent) were "partly free." While there were "some abridgments of basic rights and weak enforcement of the rule of law" in these countries, political dissent was mostly permitted, elections were largely free and citizens could believe what they wished without much fear of imprisonment.

(Sort of like Canada before human rights commissions began telling us what thoughts were and were not acceptable.)

But 43 countries and 8 territories were "not free," according to Freedom House. In those states "citizens endure systematic and pervasive human rights violations." Freedom of expression and assembly are limited or non-existent.

Critics of the government are imprisoned and occasionally executed. Sometimes they just disappear.

Of this Un-Free 43, Freedom House considers 17 countries and three territories to be "the worst of the worst."

"Within these (17) entities," Freedom House explains, "state control over daily life is pervasive and wide-ranging, independent organizations and political opposition are banned or suppressed, and fear of retribution for independent thought and action is part of daily life."

Furthermore, eight of these are considered "the world's most repressive regimes."

These include Burma (Myanmar), where the junta is so repressive and so paranoid it will not permit most international aid to enter its cyclone-ravaged land for fear aid workers will seduce the Burmese into revolt.

They value their power more than they value the lives of tens of thousands of their countrymen. The other seven most-repressive are Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Also included are two territories, Chechnya and Tibet.

Frankly, I would include Russia and China in this "most-repressive" category since neither of them possesses a good human rights record with its territory and they are the ones repressing Chechnya and Tibet, respectively.

These two territories are not repressed from within. Some of their tyrants are domestic, it's true. There are Chechens and Tibetans who collaborate with the oppressing powers by working as police and bureaucrats. But by and large it is Russians subjugating Chechens and Chinese oppressing Tibetans.

Still, Freedom House only places China in the next-to-worst group -- the nine countries and one territory that, while among the worse regimes on the planet, are not quite as bad as the eight "most-repressive."

China, then is in a sort of outer-circle-of-hell group along with Belarus, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Laos, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Zimbabwe.

The territory of Western Sahara is also in this second-worst group.

Russia makes it onto the merely not-free list. It doesn't make it to the 17 baddest of the bad.

The fascinating aspect for me is how many of Freedom House's (FH) "worst of the worst list" have also been elected by the United Nations  to be voting members of its human rights council.

The principal UN human rights watchdog has 47 members. One -- Cuba – is among the eight most-repressive governments in the world, as judged by FH. And two more -- China and Saudi Arabia -- are among the bottom 17 countries in respect for human rights.

In all 10 members of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) -- more than a fifth of its complement -- are from FH's list of countries that have few if any political freedoms.

On May 21, 15 of the 47 UNHRC seats will come up for election or re-election.

Along with UN Watch, an organization that analyzes UN activities, statements and programs, FH has declared that five of the 15 candidate countries -- Bahrain, Gabon, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zambia -- are entirely unfit for membership because of their rights records. All but one of them (Bahrain) is already a member of the commission.

This goes to show how useless the UN is at protecting human rights.

Of the 47 members’ states, UN Watch calculates that just 13 have pro-freedom voting records at Council meetings. Canada leads the way with 19 freedom-defending votes on the 32 most important resolutions to come before UNHRC last year. The next-best records belong to France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, all with 11 for 32 records.

   Yet that leaves 34 UNHRC members with anti-freedom voting patterns, including

Russia and China, who voted against expanding freedom 18 of 32 times and 19 or

32, respectively.

This was not supposed to happen. Three years ago when the corrupt, feckless UN Commission on Human Rights was replaced by the UNHRC, the world was reassured the Council would never become hijacked by rights-abusing countries the way its predecessor commission had been.

But once again the UN has placed the foxes in charge of the henhouse.

BYLINE: Lorne Gunter, Freelance