{
  "id": 3121593,
  "title": "Human rights rankings reveal surprising over- and underperformers",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/24/human-rights-rankings-reveal-surprising-over-and-underperformers",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-24T22:00:01.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phys.org",
    "slug": "phys-org",
    "url": "https://phys.org/news/2026-08-human-rights-reveal-underperformers.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A new book reveals that certain nations perform better than expected in human rights rankings, while others fall short of their potential. Scandinavian countries, Canada, and Australia are known for their strong human rights records, but Mozambique, the Philippines, and Rwanda are classified as \"overachievers\" according to the research. The book, co-written by professors from Binghamton University and the University of Rhode Island, evaluates countries using a variety of human rights measures and introduces a large data set called CIRIGHTS, which assigns numerical scores to each nation's performance. The average human rights score for governments is 70 out of 100, with the United States scoring 62.5. Democracies tend to outperform nondemocracies, and wealthier countries generally have better human rights records than poorer ones. However, some countries, despite being named overachievers or underachievers, may not be flawless in protecting civil rights. The book aims to provide systematic evidence to help scholars, policymakers, and activists better understand and compare human rights practices around the world.",
  "summary": "When it comes to human rights, it probably won't surprise you that Scandinavian countries perform well by statistical measures, along with Canada and Australia. But did you know that Mozambique, the Philippines, and Rwanda are also considered \"overperformers,\" meaning that they score higher on human rights than expected?",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}