Jordan has ranked 2nd country in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and 49th worldwide in the 2018-2019 Rule of Law Index recently issued by the World Justice Project (WJP), which assesses the adherence to the rule of law of a total of 126 countries around the world. It is noteworthy that Jordan has dropped 4 ranking points in comparison to the last report.

The Rule of Law Index included eight Arab countries: the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, and Mauritania.

At a regional level, the UAE was the top performer across the MENA region standing at the 32nd worldwide position, while Jordan ranked 49th worldwide and was followed by Tunisia 61st.

However, both Mauritania and Egypt showed significant decreases in their scores, with Egypt ranking 121 worldwide followed by Mauritania ranking 122 worldwide and the last among the 8 Arabian countries.

The top three overall performers in the 2019 WJP Rule of Law Index were Denmark, Norway, and Finland; the bottom three were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, and Venezuela.

The evaluation of rule of law adherence worldwide based on more than 120 thousand household and 3800 expert surveys in 126 countries. Featuring current, original data, the WJP Rule of Law Index measures countries’ rule of law performance across eight factors: Constraints on Government Powers, Absence of Corruption, Open Government, Fundamental Rights, Order and Security, Regulatory Enforcement, Civil Justice, and Criminal Justice.

However, the scores show that more countries declined than improved in overall rule of law performance for the second year in a row, continuing a negative slide toward weaker rule of law around the world.

The report suggested this could be due to rising authoritarianism while “Constraints on Government Powers” declined in 61 countries.