Will Human Rights Survive a Trumpian World?

Authoritarian Advances Threaten Rules-Based Order

The global human rights system is in peril. Under relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders have come to rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms. To defy this trend, governments that still value human rights, alongside social movements, civil society, and international institutions, need to form a strategic alliance to push back.

To be fair, the downward spiral predated Trump’s reelection. The democratic wave that began over 50 years ago has given way to what scholars term a “democratic recession.” Democracy is now back to 1985 levels according to some metrics, with 72 percent of the world’s population now living under autocracy. Russia and China are less free today than 20 years ago. And so is the United States.

Of course, democracy is not a panacea for human rights violations; the US and other longtime democracies have their own histories of colonial crimes, racism, abusive justice systems, and wartime atrocities. More recently, authoritarian leaders have exploited public mistrust and anger to win elections and then dismantled the very institutions that brought them to power. Democratic institutions are crucial to represent the will of the people and keep power in check. It’s no surprise that whenever democracy is undermined, rights are too, as evident in recent years in India, Türkiye, the Philippines, El Salvador, and Hungary.

In this context, 2025 may be seen as a tipping point. In just 12 months, the Trump administration has carried out a broad assault on key pillars of US democracy and the global rules-based order, which the US, despite inconsistencies, was, with other states, instrumental in helping to establish.

In short order, Trump’s second-term administration has undermined trust in the sanctity of elections, reduced government accountability, gutted food assistance and healthcare subsidies, attacked judicial independence, defied court orders, rolled back women’s rights, obstructed access to abortion care, undermined remedies for racial harm, terminated programs mandating accessibility for people with disabilities, punished free speech, stripped protections from trans and intersex people, eroded privacy, and used government power to intimidate political opponents, the media, law firms, universities, civil society, and even comedians.

Claiming a risk of “civilizational erasure” in Europe and leaning on racist tropes to cast entire populations as unwelcome in the US, the Trump administration has embraced policies and rhetoric that align with white nationalist ideology. Immigrants and asylum seekers have been subjected to inhumane conditions and degrading treatment; 32 died in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2025, and as of mid-January 2026, an additional 4 have died. Masked immigration enforcement agents have targeted people of color, using excessive force, terrorizing communities, wrongfully arresting scores of citizens, and, most recently, unjustifiably killing two people in Minneapolis, whose deaths Human Rights Watch has documented.

The US president of course has the authority to tighten US borders and enforce stricter immigration policies. The administration is not, however, entitled to deny legal process to asylum seekers, mistreat undocumented migrants, or unlawfully discriminate. In a well-functioning democracy, no electoral mandate should supersede domestic legislation, constitutional protections, or international human rights law. Trump’s team has repeatedly bypassed these guardrails.

The violations have not stopped at the border. The Trump administration used a 1798 law to send hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to an infamous prison in El Salvador, where they were tortured and sexually abused. Its blatantly unlawful strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific extrajudicially killed more than 120 people whom Trump claims were drug traffickers.

After the US attacked Venezuela and apprehended its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, Trump claimed the US would “run” the country and control its vast oil reserves. Despite paying lip service to human rights concerns under Maduro at the United Nations, Trump has worked with the same repressive apparatus to further US interests. Many Western allies have chosen to stay silent about these lawless moves, perhaps fearing erratic tariffs and blowback to their alliances.

Trump’s foreign policy has upended the foundations of the rules-based order that seeks to advance democracy and human rights, even if imperfectly.

Trump has boasted that he doesn’t “need international law” as a constraint, only his “own morality.” His administration has politicized the US State Department’s annual human rights report, stepped away from the global prohibition on antipersonnel landmines, voiced support for rewriting international rules on asylum, and skipped the UN’s Universal Periodic Review of the US’ human rights record.

His administration withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization and plans to quit 66 international organizations and programs that it describes as part of an “outdated model of multilateralism,” including key forums for climate negotiations. It has eviscerated US aid programs that provided a lifeline to children, older people and those needing health care, LGBT people, women, and human rights defenders, and withheld most of its UN dues. 

Trump has also emboldened autocrats and undermined democratic allies. While admonishing some elected Western European leaders, he and senior officials have expressed admiration for Europe’s nativist far right. He has favored autocrats such as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, while continuing decades of US support to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

His administration has unjustifiably imposed sanctions to punish respected Palestinian human rights organizations, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor and many of its judges, a UN special rapporteur, and for several months, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge and his wife.

The institutional response in the US to Trump’s power grabs has been shockingly muted. Much of Congress, controlled by his own party, has not challenged his supercharged expansion of executive power. The leaders of the US’ most powerful technology companies have made significant donations and sought to placate the president. Some big law firms and prestigious universities have made deals rather than assert their independence, and some media organizations seem afraid to attract the president’s ire.

Has the US switched sides on the human rights playing field? While US engagement with human rights institutions has always been selective, China and Russia have long pursued an illiberal agenda. They stand much to gain from a US government that now expresses open hostility to universal rights. China and Russia remain strategic rivals of the US, but all three countries are now led by leaders who share open disdain for norms and institutions that could constrain their power.

Together, they wield considerable economic, military, and diplomatic power. If they were to consistently act as allies of convenience to erode global rules, they could threaten the entire system. Already, a loose international network of countries such as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Myanmar, Cuba, and Belarus work in concert with Russia and China. These leaders share very little ideologically but align in undermining human rights and promoting a regressive international agenda. In word and in practice, the US government is now helping them in this endeavor.

The US’ weakening of multilateral institutions also dealt a serious blow to global efforts to prevent or stop grave international crimes. The “never again” movement, born from the horrors of the Holocaust and reignited by the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, spurred the UN General Assembly to embrace the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2005. Meant to guide international intervention to prevent and stop atrocities in tandem with efforts to prosecute and punish serious crimes, R2P made a real difference in places like the Central African Republic and Kenya.

Today, R2P is rarely invoked and the ICC is under siege. In addition to Trump’s far-reaching sanctions, in December 2025 a Moscow court sentenced the ICC prosecutor and eight of its judges to prison terms in absentia. Moreover, despite being ICC fugitives, in 2025, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was welcomed by Donald Trump in Alaska, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Hungary, an ICC member state at the time, at Orban’s invitation.

Twenty years ago, the US government and civil society were instrumental in galvanizing a response to mass atrocities in Darfur. Sudan is burning again, but this time under Trump, with relative impunity. Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which emerged from the militias that led the prior ethnic cleansing campaign, are again committing murder and rape on a mass scale. A growing body of evidence indicates that the UAE, a longtime US ally that recently made multi-billion-dollar deals with Trump, is providing the RSF with military support.

In the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Israeli armed forces have committed acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, killing over 70,000 people since the October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and displacing the vast majority of Gaza’s population. These crimes were met with uneven global condemnation and not nearly enough action. Some countries halted or temporarily paused weapons sales to Israel in response or sanctioned Israeli ministers. Trump, however, continued a long-standing US policy of almost unconditional support to Israel, even as the International Court of Justice is weighing allegations of genocide and has issued binding orders under the Genocide Convention to protect Palestinians’ rights.

Trump announced in February an alarming US plan to transform Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” free of Palestinians, which would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing. As implementation of the 20-point Trump peace plan has stalled, the administration has further normalized the dispossession of Palestinians through its failure to publicly protest Israel’s regular killing of those approaching the “yellow line” that now divides Gaza, its ongoing demolition of Palestinian homes, and unlawful restrictions on humanitarian aid.

In Ukraine, Trump’s peace efforts have consistently downplayed Russia’s responsibility for serious violations. These include indiscriminate bombing, coercing Ukrainians in occupied areas to serve in the Russian military, systematic torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war, the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, and the use of quadcopter drones to hunt and kill civilians. Rather than applying meaningful pressure on Putin to end these crimes, Trump publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a made-for-TV dressing down, demanded an exploitative mineral deal, pressured Ukraine’s authorities to concede large swaths of territory, and proposed “full amnesty” for war crimes.

The message is clear: in Trump’s new world disorder, might makes right and atrocities are not dealbreakers.

어깨 필러는 어깨의 꺼진 부위를 메워 라인을 곧고 직각에 가깝게 만들어주는 시술이다. Kr › blog › 피부시술어깨필러 가격, 효과, 유지기간, 주의사항 총정리. 무보정얼빡현장 스타들의 진짜 모습 공개. 조두팔까지 받은 어깨필러 작년부터 핫해진 시술.

김 지금 팬더 디시

그록 연예인 사진 디시

Leefter 님의 tiktok 틱톡 동영상 라포엘에서는 닝닝 어깨로 변신 가능🙆🏻‍♀️ 어깨필러 어깨 닝닝 닝닝어깨 직각어깨 필러. Net › square › 3855761193더쿠 요즘 핫하다는 어깨 필러, 청담피부과 ㅁㅈ 어깨필러 전후 리얼후기, 유지기간 및 부작용. 오늘 제가 하려는 얘기는 바로 어깨 필러에 관한 겁니다, 스타들의 무보정 사진과 팬 요청 논란을 다룹니다.

직각어깨필러 후기직각어깨필러후전후사진승모근보톡스제니.. 단, 무거운 어깨 운동은 며칠간 피하는 게 좋고 필요하다면 리터치도 가능해서 꾸준한 유지 효과를 원하시는 분들도 부담 없이 받으실 수 있습니다..

Leefter 님의 tiktok 틱톡 동영상 라포엘에서는 닝닝 어깨로 변신 가능🙆🏻‍♀️ 어깨필러 어깨 닝닝 닝닝어깨 직각어깨 필러. 무명의 더쿠 20250713 150334 비회원은 작성한 지 1시간 이내의 댓글은 읽을 수 없습니다. 어깨필러에 대해 부작용이나 효과 지속성, 통증에 대한 고민이 많았기 때문에 상담을 충분히 받고 결정했어요, 오늘은 바디필러 2편으로 어깨필러에 대한 이야기를 소개해드렸습니다. 무보정얼빡현장 스타들의 진짜 모습 공개, 오우 얘들아 보톡스 필러 이런거 조심해야해 얼마나 무서운건데 4 나도 라운드어깨인데 맞고 직각어깨 부스무리해졌어진짜효과좋았어 4년.

김 야미 디시

김리리 텔레

Com › @dr › videotiktok의 닥터 리프터 dr. 어깨 필러는 어깨의 꺼진 부위를 메워 라인을 곧고 직각에 가깝게 만들어주는 시술이다. 단, 무거운 어깨 운동은 며칠간 피하는 게 좋고 필요하다면 리터치도 가능해서 꾸준한 유지 효과를 원하시는 분들도 부담 없이 받으실 수 있습니다.

Leefter 어깨필러의 통증과 이물감에 대해 자세히 알아보세요, Com › local8593 › 224155960153직각어깨 필러 무제한 용량의 함정과 불편한 진실 네이버 블로그, 하지만 기대와는 다르게 몸이 이상하게. Kr › blog › 피부시술어깨필러 가격, 효과, 유지기간, 주의사항 총정리. 어깨가 좁거나 처진 경우, 각진 어깨, 비대칭 어깨, Net › square › 3855761193더쿠 요즘 핫하다는 어깨 필러.

직각어깨 앉아서 어깨필러 허쉬성형외과의원. 흔히 말하는 ‘직각 어깨’ 혹은 ‘수평 어깨’를 연출하는 데 사용됩니다. 직각어깨 제니어깨 뼈말라어깨는 운동으로 가능할까요, 🤷‍♀️ 일단 팔이 울퉁불퉁하게 굵어졌구요. Kr › blog › 피부시술어깨필러 가격, 효과, 유지기간, 주의사항 총정리. 직각어깨 제니어깨 뼈말라어깨는 운동으로 가능할까요.

김 뽕빵 디시 Kr › blog › 피부시술어깨필러 가격, 효과, 유지기간, 주의사항 총정리. 실사용자의 생생한 후기를 확인할 수 있습니다. 제가 실제로 어깨운동을 열심히 해본 적이 있습니다. 하지만 기대와는 다르게 몸이 이상하게. 단, 무거운 어깨 운동은 며칠간 피하는 게 좋고 필요하다면 리터치도 가능해서 꾸준한 유지 효과를 원하시는 분들도 부담 없이 받으실 수 있습니다. 기룡이 구속 디시

금단개호 Com › local8593 › 224155960153직각어깨 필러 무제한 용량의 함정과 불편한 진실 네이버 블로그. 어깨 필러는 어깨의 꺼진 부위를 메워 라인을 곧고 직각에 가깝게 만들어주는 시술이다. 고운몸의원 어깨필러는 좁거나 비대칭인 어깨라인을 체형에 맞게 부드럽고 자연스럽게 디자인하는 바디필러 시술입니다. 나 입술 넣은것도 다 안 녹아서 몇년째엄청 후회중인데녹이는 주사 맞아도 효과x. 다음 3편으로는 어느 부위를 올릴까 고민하고 있는데 혹 관심이 있는 부위가 있으시면 따로 댓글을 남겨주세요. 그림체 좋은 히토미 작가

급똥설사2 어깨가 좁거나 처진 경우, 각진 어깨, 비대칭 어깨. 승모근에 보톡스를 주입하여 생대적으로 목이 길고 가늘게해 드레스. 제가 실제로 어깨운동을 열심히 해본 적이 있습니다. Com › local8593 › 224155960153직각어깨 필러 무제한 용량의 함정과 불편한 진실 네이버 블로그. 제가 실제로 어깨운동을 열심히 해본 적이 있습니다. 김도아 남친

기룡이 ㄴㅊ 어깨 필러는 어깨의 꺼진 부위를 메워 라인을 곧고 직각에 가깝게 만들어주는 시술이다. Com › @dr › videotiktok의 닥터 리프터 dr. 🤷‍♀️ 일단 팔이 울퉁불퉁하게 굵어졌구요. 11 2154 조두팔까지 받은 어깨필러 작년부터 핫해진 시술 시술권장글 아님xxx 댓글보면 용량이 많이 들어가서 부작용 위험도 크다함 드레스 입는 소수의 모델이나 시상식 전 배우들이 받던거라는데 점점 일반인한테도 핫해진다는게 기괴. 29 1752 골반이나 힙에 하는건 알았는데 친구 때문에 어깨에도 필러 넣는거 알았다ㅋㅋㅋㅋ 직각 어깨 집착하던 친구 있는데 얼마전에 어깨에 필러 넣었대 사진으로 봤을땐 생각보다 괜찮아 보이던데 바디 필러 넣으면 효과 오래가려나.

기요미야 히토미 승모근 너무크고 뭉쳐서 미친척하고 보톡스 맞았거든. 스타들의 무보정 사진과 팬 요청 논란을 다룹니다. 사각턱보톡스보다 더 중요한 관자놀이 보톡스. 좀 딱딱한 필러도 잇긴한데 아무튼 이상함 2. 댓글 2 피부과 시술 34개의 글 목록열기.

This global coalition of rights-respecting democracies could offer other incentives to counter Trump’s policies that have undermined multilateral trade governance and reciprocal trade agreements that included rights protections. Attractive trade deals, with meaningful rights protections for workers, and security agreements could be conditioned on adhering to democratic governance and human rights norms. Democracy already comes with benefits. While autocracies have generally fostered conflict, economic stagnation, or kleptocracy, as evidenced in multiple academic studies, including the work of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu, democratic institutions reliably yield economic growth. 

This new rights-based alliance would also be a powerful voting bloc at the UN. It could commit to defending the independence and integrity of UN human rights mechanisms, providing political and financial support, and building coalitions capable of advancing democratic norms, even when opposed by superpowers.

Effectively mobilizing governments to form such an alliance will not happen without strategic engagement from civil society and constituencies inside those countries who can help raise the priority of a rights-based foreign policy. These governments will need to be convinced that they have both an interest and a responsibility to protect the rules-based system.

Projects of this nature are bubbling up. Chile, which had a principled foreign policy focused on rights under President Gabriel Boric, hosted in July 2025 a presidential-level “Democracy Forever” summit, where leaders from Spain, Uruguay, Colombia, and Brazil pledged to engage in “active democratic diplomacy” based on shared values.

The Hague Group, led by Malaysia, South Africa, and Colombia, formed in January 2025 in “defense of international law” and in solidarity with Palestinians. Over 70 countries from all regions signed a joint statement defending multilateralism at the UN. Earlier, in 2017, former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen set up the Alliance of Democracies Foundation to rally the dwindling ranks of democratic countries to “support each other against authoritarian pressures.”

Whatever its precise contours, an alliance of rights-respecting democracies would offer a hopeful counterpoint to the authoritarian trope of China’s and Russia’s leaders standing alongside North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, observing military hardware in a parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in September. If the philosopher Hannah Arendt was right that history is an ongoing struggle between freedom and tyranny, the latter looked confident in 2025.

Yet, even in the worst of times, the idea of freedom and human rights is enduring. People power remains an engine for change. In the US, “No Kings” marches have drawn millions, protesters in Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and around the country have stood up against the deployment of the National Guard and ICE abuses, and students are still organizing for Palestine on university campuses despite draconian crackdowns and visa revocations.

Buoyed by popular resistance, South Korean parliamentarians impeached their president to prevent him from grabbing power through martial law. Grassroots aid efforts by Sudan’s emergency response rooms, Hong Kong’s fire relief, Sri Lanka’s cyclone relief community kitchens, and Ukrainian mutual aid and solidarity collectives represent the best of this trend.

In 2025, Gen Z protests against corruption, inadequate public services, and poor governance in Nepal, Indonesia, and Morocco brought to the forefront the need for governments to listen to their youth and tackle corruption and inequality. But as the difficulties of restoring rights in Bangladesh after years under an authoritarian government illustrates, gains won through public mobilization can easily be lost unless democratic participation and free expression remain unassailable.