DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression Examining Policy Responses to Transnational Repression Rwandan foreign minister Vincent Biruta (right) shakes hands with UK home secretary Priti Patel at a partnership signing ceremony in Kigali, Rwanda, on April 14, 2022. Photo credit: Nouvelle/SIPA via Shutterstock. A ll governments have a responsibility to protect people living inside their borders from violence and threats. In the case of transnational repression, this obligation is complicated by the insidious ways in which some perpetrator regimes pursue their critics and diasporas abroad. It is not enough to know which, where, and how origin states use tactics of transnational repression. To effectively protect exiles and diaspora residents—both those who take the lead in defending democratic values and those who are targeted simply for Host governments must assess their own policies and improve the ability to prevent, mitigate, and respond to attacks by foreign actors. 10 @FreedomHouse exercising their basic human rights—host governments must assess their own policies and improve their ability to prevent, mitigate, and respond to attacks by foreign actors. In order to inform such efforts, Freedom House analyzed the policies of nine countries: Canada, Germany, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Foreign-born individuals make up between 2 and 20 percent of the populations of these countries, which also collectively host a quarter of all refugees and asylum seekers in the world.41 Exiles and members of diasporas living in these states have been subjected to some of the most extreme forms of transnational repression, including assassinations and assassination attempts, kidnappings, assaults, detentions, renditions, unlawful deportations, and threats of violence. The nine countries vary on important political and economic indicators. Six of the nine are rated Free in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, with scores that range from #TransnationalRepression