Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what factors his Department takes into account in deciding whether to escalate a country from being a case study to a country of concern in its annual Human Rights and Democracy Report.

Country case studies were introduced in 2012 as a way to report on countries which do not meet the overall threshold for a country of concern, but which we judge nonetheless to be facing human rights challenges, or to be on a trajectory of change with regard to their human rights performance. This change could be positive or negative. Designation as a country case study does not therefore imply that these countries are likely to be designated a country of concern in future.

Each year the Foreign and Commonwealth Office carries out a review of its countries of concern and country case studies against our four criteria. If this analysis were to show that an existing country case study had deteriorated significantly against these criteria, it is likely that its categorisation would be changed accordingly.