The Atlas of Impunity

Impunity is the exercise of power without accountability, which becomes, in its clearest form, the commission of crimes without punishment.
 

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Impunity is not experienced equally across the globe. Where accountability is strong, citizens benefit from institutions that protect human rights and personal freedoms and impose just consequences on those who abuse power. Where it is weak or wholly absent, repression deepens and conflict intensifies, leaving those most vulnerable exposed to violence and exploitation without redress. In 2025, these divides continue to widen.

Now in its fourth edition, the Atlas of Impunity tracks these disparities across nearly 200 countries, measuring the degree to which ordinary people experience the consequences of power without accountability. Impunity is assessed across five dimensions: unaccountable governance, the abuse of human rights, economic exploitation, conflict and violence, and environmental degradation.

The Atlas is intended to provide a practical and accessible tool to draw attention to abuses of power and press policymakers for change. Impunity should also be a concern for the private sector, as wherever impunity thrives, business conditions deteriorate.

Guided by a global advisory board of experts on governance and human rights, the Atlas provides a comparative snapshot of impunity by country, drawing on 60 indicators from 24 credible independent datasets.






The map above shows the overall impunity and dimension scores and rankings for all countries with full or partial data. Each country is scored on the five dimensions of impunity and then each country is given an overall impunity score based on the average of its scores across the five dimensions. 

Building on previous editions, this year's Atlas introduces a rescaled 0-100 scoring system, where higher scores correspond to higher levels of impunity. It also introduces a mid-year publication date to incorporate more timely data and a new analytical framework that sheds light on the structural causes of impunity.


 

*Overall ranks and scores shown.

 

Key TaKEAWAYS

The “great divergence” in global accountability is widening. While the global average impunity score has remained virtually flat since 2020 (moving from 40.04 to 39.50 out of 100), this stability obscures a deep inequality. Accountability is improving in the middle and bottom segments of the distribution but deteriorating rapidly in the most repressive and conflict-ridden states.

Unaccountable governance is the single largest driver of global impunity. Institutional decay—particularly the erosion of press freedoms, personal liberties, and democratic political culture—is the primary engine of rising impunity. The erosion of press freedom, which recorded the steepest decline of any single indicator, degrades the information environment on which accountability depends, leaving abuses hidden and citizens without the means to challenge unchecked power.

The devastating toll of conflict is concentrated in just a few territories. Despite a sharp rise in the number of active conflicts, average conflict and violence scores remain stable because the pain of war is not borne equally. About two-thirds of ranked countries have seen their scores on this dimension improve since 2020, while 61 states—roughly the same number involved in state-based conflicts—have seen their scores deteriorate. Even among states in conflict, violent events are heavily skewed. For instance, Ukraine alone accounted for 46% of all recorded battles in 2025, and Myanmar accounted for 31% of all state-perpetrated violence against civilians. Most of the world thus remains insulated from war's devastation, while a small number of high-impunity states absorb a disproportionate share of its human cost.

Impunity stems from four distinct underlying causes. Economic rebalancing has empowered autocratic regimes and a rising class of ultrawealthy elites. Rapid technological change has expanded the infrastructure of repression. The advance of illiberalism is eroding democratic checks domestically while coordinating transnationally to obstruct accountability mechanisms. Lastly, a “G-Zero” leadership deficit has created conditions that allow regional conflicts to emerge and actors to break rules without consequence.

Impunity spreads through the systematic erosion of four interdependent pillars of accountability. These are the rules and norms that define acceptable conduct; the information environment that helps citizens identify breaches; the deliberative forums that examine violations and establish facts; and the enforcement mechanisms that impose consequences. When one pillar weakens, the others come under greater strain.

The US has emerged as a bellwether for rising global impunity. The only Western country among the ten with the greatest rise in impunity over the past year, the US's ranking deteriorated by six places to 117th. Moreover, Washington's dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, effectively defunding its accountability-focused contractors ,has weakened the global infrastructure of accountability. Those cuts have dealt severe blows to the global network of actors that uphold rules, norms, and human rights worldwide.  

 

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The Atlas is developed in partnership between Eurasia Group and a global advisory board of human rights experts. The Atlas is made possible with financial support from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The data used for this edition of the Atlas comes from sources published through 30 April 2026.