Old numbers, new rankings – Guyana’s 2025 WJP Rule of Law Index score drawn from 2018 and 2022 surveys

The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance acknowledges the publication of the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 reported in the media recently and notes the continued efforts of a number of international agencies to assess global governance, anti-corruption, and human rights performance.

Guyana values mechanisms that facilitate such comparative reviews, as they complement the State’s own ongoing commitments under international frameworks including the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), the Inter-American Convention against Corruption through the MESICIC, the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), and the International Monetary Fund Article IV, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, UN Human Rights Council, UN Treaty Bodies and other development partners.

Guyana notes its ranking in the 2025 Index (80th in the 2025 report, down from 78th in the 2024 report) and reiterates the importance of transparent and methodologically sound assessments. The 2025 report,  without question, relies on older datasets including a household polling data which originates from 2018 and 2022 by the StatMark Group. Of note, neither of these face-to-face surveys were ever made public at the time nor does the public know of the StatMark Group.

By its own admission, the report states that “where rule of law is stronger, so is the economy” Guyana, as one of the fastest growing economies, is a living example of this.

The report therefore cannot be construed as a real reflection of Guyana’s 2025 realities, particularly given ongoing institutional and legislative reforms across governance and justice sectors after 2022, and certainly since 2018.

Figure 1 – Excerpt from the 2025 WJP Rule of Law Index Methodology

The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance encourages the media and public to consult official data sources and exercise critical review when interpreting or reproducing third-party publications, particularly in this case where the data being used is as old as seven years ago.

While these rankings such as in the WJP 2025 Rule of Law Index 2025 may provide attractive sound bites for some, on closer examination, they do not independently reflect progress unless accompanied by nominal scores and underlying datasets. The absence of detailed nominal values for the sub-factors limits the analytical value of the rankings, especially in the context of informing policy application and public understanding.

Further, while the report indicates that expert perceptions also form part of the foundation of the Index, it is unclear how these “experts” were identified and how the perceptions of those experts were validated in 2025, if at all, especially since it is evident that the contributors, except for two individuals, requested anonymity.  It cannot be that the perceptions of a few anonymous people are considered representative of the entire population of approximately 800,000. Without more rigorous sampling parameters, it is indeed difficult to validate the robustness or representativeness of the findings.

Figure 2 – Excerpt from the WJP Rule of Law Index Report Section on “Contributing Experts”

Guyana remains open to continued engagement with international partners and other monitoring mechanisms, as is evidenced in the two large scale reviews undertaken just this year through the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) and the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

However, the Government continues to underscore the necessity for continuous scrutiny of methodologies, transparent disclosure of sample sizes, and the timely updating of datasets to ensure that global indices accurately portray current conditions, particularly for countries in the global south. The use of outdated data from 2018 and 2022 must not be misconstrued as depicting Guyana’s 2025 governance environment.