Guar­an­tee of eight se­lected fun­da­men­tal rights

The data is based on the World Justice Project (WJP) index, which draws on surveys of citizens and expert interviews. It is one of the few indices to provide an international comparison. The eight selected fundamental rights are: equal treatment and absence of discrimination, the right to life and security, compliance with due process of law, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of belief and religion, freedom from arbitrary interference with privacy, freedom of assembly and association, and fundamental labour rights. They are rated on a scale of 0 to 1 (optimum state), shown individually and also given equal weighting in an overall index.

Monitoring the upholding of fundamental rights is a new and somewhat controversial field that involves a complex methodology. The results of the WJP, one of the most respected independent non-governmental organisations in the USA, provide a good approximation in an area that is very difficult to measure and allow a comparison to be made of 102 countries. Results are available for Germany since 2011, but only the figures since 2012 have been used because of changes to the questions.

The survey has methodological shortcomings because in each country it only covers 1,000 citizens in the three largest cities. In Germany these are Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. In each country, interviews were held with more than 20 experts about details covered in the survey.