Freedom House should seek to create opportunities for groups that could play an important role in a future civic mobilization to connect with national, regional, and international prodemocracy organizations—and with one another—to share strategies, tools, and approaches. When rights defenders come under threat, democracies should help provide medical, legal, and psychosocial support as needed. When these defenders are imprisoned, democratic governments, international civil society groups, and members of the public should condemn their detention, seek their immediate and unconditional release, and call for the dropping of all charges. Should it become necessary for rights defenders to relocate, temporary internal relocation is often most desirable. When a situation becomes so dangerous that defenders and activists need to be evacuated from their country, democratic governments should be prepared to provide temporary visas or long-term residency, and support for exiled activists to resume their lives and vital work. Activists and rights defenders from authoritarian states that have been sanctioned also sometimes experience banking obstacles or other challenges related to private-sector risk aversion. Democratic governments should work with the private sector to minimize such inadvertent impacts. Democracies must remain vigilant to combat transnational repression. Between 2014 and 2021, Freedom House found that authorities in at least 36 origin countries had reached beyond their own borders to intimidate, harass, and even kidnap or murder exiled dissidents and members of diaspora communities across 84 countries. Democratic governments should guard against the commission of transnational repression on their soil by ensuring that laws are updated as needed, providing officials with training to recognize and respond to transnational repression, reaching out to diaspora groups that may be targeted, and prosecuting or imposing sanctions on perpetrators. the Partly Free or Not Free categories, it often struggles to recover. This makes the provision of diplomatic, technical, and financial support especially important for countries that have seen promising democratic development or are at risk of democratic deterioration. These include Kenya and Zambia, which have experienced recent improvements; Armenia, Sri Lanka, and El Salvador, where democracy is under pressure; and Nigeria, Turkey, India, and Thailand, which face important upcoming elections, among others. Democracies should help democratically inclined leaders and local civil society organizations in these countries deliver tangible expansions of political rights and civil liberties. Democratic governments should also work with civil society to prepare for change. No authoritarian regime is permanent; autocracies can seem durable until they suddenly collapse. Only 12 countries that exist today have always been rated Not Free in Freedom in the World. And even within those countries—including Cuba and China— protests against governance problems like corruption, societal restrictions, and economic mismanagement can draw large numbers and broad support. Democratic governments should provide vocal, public endorsements of grassroots prodemocracy movements and respond to any violent crackdown by authorities with targeted sanctions, reduced or conditioned foreign assistance if the country had been receiving any, and public condemnation. Democracies must be prepared for political upheaval in Not Free countries and draw up serious contingency plans for responding to political change, both negative and positive, including the emergence of widespread popular movements for a more open society. More broadly, policy strategies for Not Free countries should not rely on the assumption that the current systems and conditions will persist indefinitely. Detailed policy recommendations can be found here: https://freedomhouse.org/policy-recommendations In addition, democracy assistance should be focused on countries and regions facing critical junctures. Freedom House research has shown that once a country tips into FreedomHouse.org 35