Methodology |

Why and for what purpose was this database built?
What type of information do we collect?
What do we not document?
Where does the data come from?
Is the information collected in the database exhaustive?
How is the information updated?
How are the variables and sub-variables constructed?

1. Why and for what purpose was this database built?

In recent years, the growth of the far right at the international level has become a concerning phenomenon. This growth is perceptible on a global scale, both in terms of the rise of neo-fascist figures occupying government positions (currently at the Executive branch level in Argentina, the United States, Hungary, and Italy, and in legislative and municipal roles in Brazil, Germany, Spain, and many others) and in relation to social and political processes of democratic degradation. Based on careful study of the global gatherings that the far right has been holding over the past decade — events such as CPAC, Transatlantic Summits, the Patriots Network, and the Madrid Forum, among others — a first working hypothesis we seek to test is that the far right shares a common playbook. A set of agenda items whose implementation becomes part of the process of consolidating power. Even accounting for peculiar variations at the country level, certain constants are observed: attacks on freedom of expression, conservative stances on sexual and reproductive rights, stigmatization of feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements, and racism- and xenophobia-based discrimination. Less rhetorically prominent, but equally perceptible in these governments, is the encroachment on labor rights.

As a human rights organization, we are concerned that democracy may become an empty signifier and that authoritarian governments will turn our common good agendas into targets of attack. From this rights-based perspective, we believe it is necessary to monitor this growth, generate alerts, and disseminate findings among political actors fighting authoritarianism. We seek to analyze, understand, and communicate:

How their policies unfold across different countries
What the main axes of action are and how they are carried out
How experiences of resistance and counter-hegemonic response manifest

A record of this nature allows us to measure the impact of authoritarianism across different countries. This constitutes a tool for updating our diagnosis, for learning about the effectiveness of their tactics and strategies, and about the forms that resistance and democratic resilience take. Far from being an alarm instrument that contributes to hopelessness, this observatory seeks to raise awareness and distinguish between anti-democratic modes of action and practices that counter their influence. We propose that the data we compile become inputs for the collective development of analysis. Thus, opening up spaces for political reflection among diverse actors to discuss these learnings is a key component of the strategy this Observatory proposes.

2. What type of information do we collect?

The International Map of Threatened Rights (MIDA) is built as a database that compiles information on government measures which, by virtue of their anti-democratic nature, their violation or obstruction of the full enjoyment of human rights, or their promotion or tolerance of violent attacks against groups identified as political opponents, are understood here as part of the international deployment of the far right in power.

It also documents collective demonstrations of protest, opposition, and repudiation of such measures, with the intention of giving visibility and value to the diverse forms of popular resistance. In this first phase of the project, MIDA begins its analysis from June 2024, takes June 2025 as its first benchmark, and focuses on Argentina, Brazil, Germany, the United States, and Spain.

The choice of these countries enables observation of realities in which the far right occupies different positions: countries with an executive branch in the hands of far-right figures (Argentina, the United States); countries that had far-right governments and where those political forces currently contest municipal, state-level, or national legislative power (Brazil); countries that, through coalition governments and measures such as a “cordon sanitaire,” seek to halt the advance of the far right (Spain, Germany). Representatives of the far right in these countries have convened at international gatherings — CPAC, the Pan-American Forum of Young Politicians, the Transatlantic Summit, the Madrid Forum, the Buenos Aires Forum, among others — where a common agenda is promoted and tools, contacts, and funding are shared. Across the different national cases analyzed, space is opened for reflection on the fluid connections between the “old” and “new” right.

3. What do we not document?

Acknowledging the existence of observatories and monitoring efforts focused on violent attacks occurring within civil society itself — rooted in racism, denialism, misogyny, anti-feminism, or LGBTIQ+-phobia in the United States, Brazil, Germany, and Argentina, among others — MIDA specifically focuses on government actions. Examples of such actions we monitor include: the enactment of laws or decrees, the repeal of progressive legislation, the closure of public policy programs that guarantee access to rights, regressive votes in multilateral bodies, orders to repress social protest, and anti-democratic statements by government officials in the public sphere, including interventions on social media.

By concentrating on governmental political agendas, MIDA is designed to function as a complement to those monitoring efforts focused on documenting the capillary spread of violence, in order to draw possible correlations between state actions and the social reverberations they generate. This Map also does not aim to construct a democratic measurement index from which to assign differential values to each country, as monitors such as Civicus or Latinobarómetro propose through their respective methodologies. Thus, the comparison across the different national cases analyzed seeks less to uncover common denominators or establish links in a chain of progression, and more to illuminate regional panoramas, transnational connections, and open questions about the levels of effectiveness in implementing these far-right agendas. Such levels seek to be linked to the domestic dynamics of resistance, buffering, or counterattack strategies in each country.

4. Where does the data come from?

MIDA takes a creative and dynamic approach to artificial intelligence tools, which allow for an initial broad mapping, month by month, of the main measures, regressions, and manifestations of resistance in each of the monitored countries. We work with claude.ai and, through iterative refinement of increasingly specific prompts — in terms of subject matter, geographic scope, and time period — we arrive at a set of links that serve as evidence for these events. Building on this initial exploration, we proceed to investigate media outlets, official gazettes, and reports produced by civil society organizations in each country. At present, we are also in the process of developing a web scraping tool that will allow us to conduct automated sweeps of information across various media websites.

5. Is the information collected in the database exhaustive?

The data will be illustrative, but not exhaustive. The public visibility of the events that MIDA seeks to document is subject to various circumstances related to journalistic production, the political context of the country, and the severity of the news in question. It is possible that some events are under-recorded; however, the proposed analysis will not be centered on the quantity of events or news items, but rather on assessing the diverse forms that the advance of authoritarianism takes and the resistance it generates.

6. How is the information updated?

We aim to produce four-month data update cycles. Based on these, we will propose preliminary analyses as a team and invite journalists, academics, and activists from different countries to share their impressions and reflections based on the collected information. The axes along which we will work to analyze the phenomenon are:

Freedom of expression / right to social protest
Sexual freedom / sexual and reproductive rights
Racism / xenophobia
Labor rights

The data we compile is organized into entries by date, country, chosen axes, and types of change. Each type of change is assigned a place on a value scale, which then allows us to construct dynamic charts to observe shifts year by year. For each axis, we monitor: advances, setbacks, threats, defenses, and acts of resistance.

We define an advance as the recognition and effective guarantee of new rights.

Setbacks are government measures that regressively affect the rights of the entire population or of a broad group segmented by specific characteristics (migrants, religious minorities, sexual minorities, salaried workers, journalists, etc.). These actions hinder or prevent the exercise of rights.

Within the category of threats, we include both public statements by senior officials that express attacks on the rights analyzed here, and negative votes in multilateral bodies that undermine or expressly attack the rights we monitor. These do not immediately modify the normative framework or access to rights.

Within the broad range of possible forms of resistance, MIDA takes into consideration large-scale marches and public demonstrations held in response to an attack on the monitored rights. We also record precautionary measures and judicial injunctions that civil society organizations successfully use to halt measures that constitute setbacks.

We define defenses as institutional actions, decisions, or positions taken before multilateral bodies that are aimed at sustaining, protecting, or strengthening already-recognized rights.

In order to gauge the levels of impact of the different measures analyzed, each event in the four-month report we produce receives a rating that allows us to generate dynamic charts by rights category:

Setback: −2
Threat: −1
Defense: +1
Resistance: +2
Advance: +2

The sources used to compile each assessment will be annexed in each publication. The objective of the assessment is to establish a situational overview for each variable that reflects:

A general diagnosis of the current state of affairs
An enumeration of the most significant changes over the past year, providing a sense of advances, setbacks, and acts of resistance, with both a general overview and a focus on each group of rights analyzed.

Each report will include a general contextual overview of each country, a breakdown by rights category, and the corresponding line charts that allow for the identification of advances and setbacks. We produce an indicator representing the sum of types of change, which assigns a total rating to each country on its own terms. This number corresponds to a position on a heat map, visible on the homepage of our website and also within each report. Unlike other observatories, the comparison we propose does not strictly seek to rank countries against one another; rather, the spectrum ranging from red to green is configured for each national unit analyzed based on the highest and lowest points of advances and setbacks observable in the line chart for the period studied.

The preparation of reports includes careful reading of reflections by researchers and political analysts from each country, as well as conversations with colleagues who have on-the-ground knowledge. We also make use of exchanges with artificial intelligence tools to develop possible hypotheses for understanding correlations between advances and setbacks across variables and to detect the effects of regional and international contexts on those shifts.

7. How are the variables and sub-variables constructed?

Each variable corresponds to a set of rights. The variables are: Freedom of Expression, Sexual and Reproductive Rights, Labor Rights, and — under the variable Racism and Xenophobia — we encompass the rights of indigenous peoples, migrants, and ethnic or religious minorities. The focus on these categories draws on various studies of the current agendas of the far right, as well as existing reflections on the degradation of the substantive character of democratic values (see the final section for reference bibliography). The sub-variables aim to focus on a specific right or dimension within each variable. We draw on the definitions agreed upon in international human rights treaties for each of these variables and sub-variables. In recording each event, each variable and its respective sub-variable is linked to a type of change (advance, setback, defense, resistance), which means that neither the variable nor the sub-variable carries an inherent evaluative weight — only in relation to its associated type of change.

Variable Freedom of Expression:

Encompasses fundamental democratic rights whose scope is synthesized in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of opinion; the right to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Sub-variables:

Freedom of the press: reflects the right to the free exercise of journalism and press work; the circulation of verified and truthful information; and civil society’s access to that information.

Right to social protest: refers to the democratic exercise of expressing dissent through mobilizations and demonstrations of various kinds. Although this sub-variable is directly related to the Freedom of Expression variable, we will use it to account for any mobilization that takes place in defense of rights under attack that fall under other variables monitored here.

Right to association and assembly: In line with Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this refers specifically to the exercise of the right to build and sustain collective spaces of association such as political parties, trade unions, and civil society organizations.

Variable Sexual Freedom / Sexual and Reproductive Rights:

Encompasses fundamental and inalienable human rights that enable all people to decide freely, in an informed and safe manner, about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction, without discrimination, coercion, or violence. They guarantee access to health care, sexual education, family planning, and pleasure, recognizing individual autonomy over one’s reproductive and sexual life.

Sub-variables:

Access to contraception and abortion: refers to the existence of legislation or regulations that enable access to these sexual and reproductive rights.

LGBTIQ+ rights: encompass respect for equality, dignity, and protection against violence, discrimination, and stigma based on sexual orientation or gender identity. They include the right to non-discrimination, equal marriage, free gender expression, and health.

Protection against gender-based violence: the fundamental right to a life free from aggression, comprehensive protection (physical, psychological, social), access to immediate free legal assistance and financial support. These include access to shelters, specialized health care, labor rights (mobility, working time adjustments, contract termination), and the right to information and protection from confrontation with the aggressor.

Right to care: at the intersection between this set of rights and those covered under Labor Rights, we find the right to care. Drawing on a 2025 definition from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the autonomous right to care encompasses every person’s right to have the time, spaces, and resources needed to provide, receive, or secure conditions that ensure their own or others’ comprehensive well-being, and that allow them to freely pursue their life projects according to their capabilities and stage of life. This is a right grounded in the principles of social and family co-responsibility, solidarity, and equality and non-discrimination. In terms of state actions that guarantee this right, we observe public policies aimed at reorganizing the social and economic dimensions of care work for dependent persons, recognizing care as an autonomous and integral human right. These policies seek co-responsibility among the state, the market, families, and the community, prioritizing gender equality, the dignity of caregivers, and the well-being of children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

Variable Right to a social life free from racism and xenophobia:

Encompasses the full exercise of the rights of migrants, indigenous peoples and communities, and the defense of religious plurality and ethnic diversity.

Sub-variables:

Rights of migrants: these are the rights linked to the dignity, integrity, and safety of every person, regardless of their immigration status. They include the right to non-discrimination, life, health, work, due process, and freedom from torture or arbitrary detention. They are grounded in respect for human dignity and the right to free movement.

Rights of indigenous peoples and communities: encompass protection of both individual freedoms and collective rights, with a focus on self-determination, land, culture, and identity. They are based on equality, non-discrimination, and free, prior, and informed consent regarding measures that affect them, as enshrined in international instruments such as ILO Convention No. 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Right to freedom of religion: a fundamental human right enshrined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees every person the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. It includes the right to profess, change, manifest, and practice beliefs freely, whether in public or in private.

Variable Labor rights:

Considered fundamental human rights, these protect the dignity, freedom, and equality of individuals in the workplace, regulating relations of subordination to prevent exploitation. Recognized internationally by the ILO and the UN, these rights encompass fair conditions, a living wage, non-discrimination, freedom of association, and collective bargaining — all essential for personal and social fulfillment.

Sub-variables:

Right to fair working conditions: encompasses guarantees such as the right to an employment contract, a living wage, non-discrimination, and employment-related social security.

Right to trade union organization: refers to workers’ freedom to be represented and to organize within a trade union.

Right to strike: the right of workers to collectively suspend work tasks for a defined period of time in order to obtain better working or union conditions.

Social security rights: encompasses social security regulations that protect individuals in old age, disability, maternity, and other circumstances, guaranteeing income through pensions or benefits, generally financed by mandatory contributions. These rights seek to protect the human dignity and economic well-being of workers and their families, enabling access to contributory pensions (financed by the worker) or non-contributory ones (state assistance).