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

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.