Guyana slips in global rule of law ranking as freedoms decline
Guyana has slipped again in the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index, falling to 81st out of 143 countries in the 2026 edition released this week, with the report flagging restrictions on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and civic participation among the concerns behind the decline.
The new placing keeps Guyana on a downward path. The country ranked 80th in the 2025 Index, itself down from 78th the year before. Among high-income countries, Guyana now ranks 50th out of 51 — second from the bottom of that group — despite being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world on the back of its oil boom.
The WJP Rule of Law Index is the world’s leading independent measure of how the rule of law is experienced by ordinary people. It scores countries across eight areas — constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, and the civil and criminal justice systems — drawing on household surveys and questionnaires completed by legal experts in each country.
The 2026 result also leaves Guyana behind several Caribbean neighbours in the global table, including Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
The government has challenged the Index before. When the 2025 edition was published, the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance objected that the ranking rested on household polling data from 2018 and 2022, which it said did not reflect Guyana’s current realities or the reforms undertaken since. Up to press time, there had been no official response to the 2026 edition.
For a country courting record levels of foreign investment, the latest ranking is likely to fuel fresh debate at home over whether Guyana’s institutions are keeping pace with its oil wealth.
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