Freedom House Syria. Similarly, South Africa has ousted Rwandan diplomats, and Sweden has declared at least 10 diplomats personae non gratae for their espionage activities against various diaspora communities. the newly liberated flows of ideas, goods, and people across previously closed frontiers, as well as by the institutionalization of free and fair elections. But by the mid-2000s, global freedom was beginning to decline, and the deterioration has been ongoing for the past 16 consecutive years.68 The limits of domestic responses No country that hosts exiles and diasporas has yet solved the problem of transnational repression. Some progress is being made as various countries increase the resilience of their institutions, build protections for targeted individuals into their policies, and strengthen measures of accountability. Governments can further bolster their respective safeguards by sharing knowledge on how to craft responses to transnational repression that uphold the human rights of targeted individuals. These domestic responses, however, can never be more than partial solutions, because transnational repression is both a symptom and a driver of the global spread of authoritarian rule. In the 1990s, after the collapse of military dictatorships in Latin America and Africa and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many hoped that nondemocratic countries around the world would make a slow but inevitable transition to democracy. Democratic consolidation was thought to be assured by Transnational repression is both a symptom and a driver of the global spread of authoritarian rule. Authoritarian leaders are stifling dissent at home and reaching out to silence critics who have fled their territories. Increasingly, autocrats are banding together to attack human rights worldwide. Democratic governments and those striving for democracy can do a great deal more to insulate people living inside their borders from attacks by hostile regimes. Ultimately, though, only a unified democratic commitment to the universality of human rights can roll back the steady authoritarian gains that have so emboldened the perpetrators of transnational repression. freedomhouse.org 17