New York -- Uganda was rated "partly free" in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2001-2002 report, released Wednesday. According to the U.S. NGO’s report, nine African countries are free, 25 are partly free, and 19 are not free. Twenty African nations are electoral democracies, by the report’s definition of the term.

The report pointed to a stark discrepancy between Islamic nations and the rest of the world. Only 23 percent of nations with an Islamic majority were electoral democracies, as compared to 76 percent of the rest of the world’s nations. None of the 16 Arab nations in the Middle East and North Africa is a democracy, according to the report.

This trend is notable in Africa, in which only one of 20 majority Islamic countries is rated free, while eight of the 33 other countries are rated free.

"This freedom and democracy divide exists not only between Islamic countries and the prosperous West," said Adrian Karatnycky, Freedom House president and coordinator of the survey. "There is a growing chasm between the Islamic community and the rest of world."

"In the wake of the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, it is imperative that policymakers around the globe give serious attention to the democracy gap in the Islamic world," said Freedom House chairman Bill Richardson.

The report was not without encouraging signs. This year marked the highest percentage of the world’s population, 41.4 percent, living in countries considered free.

However, over the more than 20 years that Freedom House has issued a report, while most of the world has become more free, the trend in the Islamic world has been diametrically opposed.

The report bases its judgement of freedom on two ratings: one for civil liberties, and one for political rights. The survey team consisted of over a dozen investigators who make a number of fact-finding missions to assess the situation on the ground in as many countries as possible. Each country then was rated on a scale of 1 to 7, with a lower score meaning more free. Free countries had an average score of 1-3; partly free, 3-5.5; and not free, 5.5-7.

Uganda was right on the borderline. With a score of 6 in political rights and 5 in civil liberties, Uganda could have also been rated not free. In fact, Kenya had identical scores but was rated not free.

Tanzania was the only country near Uganda to rate partly free, with scores of 5 and 4. Burundi (6, 6), the Democratic Republic of Congo (6, 6), and Rwanda (7,6) all were rated not free.

Sudan received the worst possible marks, 7 and 7. These were the same marks given to Taliban-governed Afghanistan.