Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

60 • Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom
sex-selective abortions and infanticide of females. Homicide is calculated
as murders per 100,000 population. Human trafficking gauges the
rate per 100,000 population of “the recruitment, transport, transfer, harboring
or receipt of a person by such means as threat or use of force
or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud or deception for the
purpose of exploitation.”7 The sexual violence indicator refers to rape
and sexual assault, while the assault measure refers to all other forms of
assault that result in bodily harm short of death. Finally, we use an indicator
from the EIU that provides a qualitative assessment of the level of
perceived criminality.
The final two components in this category are the threat to private
property and the threat to foreigners. The first of the two components
includes indicators of theft and burglary, which are self-explanatory, and
inheritance, which measures whether the practice favors male heirs. The
last component is a qualitative assessment by the EIU that measures “societies’
and governments’ attitude to foreigners and their investments,” an
indicator of the level of freedom not just of foreigners but also of nationals
who wish to peacefully interact with them.
One indicator we did not include because of a lack of agreement
rather than a lack of data was capital punishment. One of us—Tanja
Štumberger—believes that it should be included; one of us—Ian
Vásquez—does not. The argument in favor of its inclusion is that the
government should never be given the power to take away a person’s
life, at least not in the case of a crime for which a judicial process was
held and the defendant convicted (a national military killing in the case
of legitimate self-defense is a different matter). State power exercised in
this way is itself a huge transgression of rights. The other view opposes
capital punishment as a poor policy because the judicial process cannot
be counted on even in the most civilized countries to always avoid
making mistakes that result in the death penalty being imposed on an
innocent person. However, that efficiency argument is different from
one that claims that it is unjust to take away one’s life as punishment for
committing a most heinous crime. Because this index attempts to measure
the extent of negative liberty and actual transgressions against it—
rather than merely good or bad policy—capital punishment should not
be included here according to this view. We have looked for guidance
in the classical liberal literature and among contemporary liberal thinkers
and it is not clear that there is any settled liberal opinion on the matter.
We have thus left this indicator out of the index for the time being
7 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. This data refers to the country in which trafficking
is detected. Note that this definition does not include human smuggling, which
involves consent.
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