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.

이탈리아어 italiano는 이탈리아, 바티칸, 산마리노 및 스위스 의 티치노 주 등의 지역에서 쓰이는 로망스어군 계열 언어이다. 영어이름 leah 어때 인스티즈instiz 스터디 카테고리. 어떤 영어이름들이 미국과 영국에서 많이 사용되는 지, 어떤 영어이름이. 미국에서 예쁜 영어이름의 유행은 대중문화의 영향을 받으며, 오랫동안 사랑받는 예쁜 영어이름들도 많습니다.

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중국 상하이에 위치한 대한민국임시정부임정 청사 인근에서 한국 유명 베이커리 브랜드를 모방한 것으로 보이는 빵집이 운영되고 있어 논란이 일고 있다 read more, Lia 가수 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전, 3 lia는 또한 rosalia, julia, cordelia 같은.

15세에 미국으로 건너가 대학을 마치고 로스앤젤레스에서 활동하던 중, 에어의 오프닝 테마 〈새의 시〉를 부른 것을 계기로 귀국하였다. Viviana 비비아나 활기차게, 살아있는 이라는 뜻 이탈리아 소녀의 이름이자 이탈리아 어원 활력있고 기쁨을 유지하는 삶이 떠오르는 이름 waverly 웨이벌리 떨리는 아스펜스의 초원 이라는 뜻을 가지고 있음. Lia로 끝나는 이름들의 애칭이기도 해요, Com › two_rin_mom › 223699154893여자아이 영어이름 인기 탑10 뜻 2024년 10월 최신 네이버 블로그. Discover the beautiful name lia, a feminine gem of hebrew and latin origins.

영어이름마다 들었을때 느껴지는 이미지가 있기에 여자아이 영어이름 뜻 같이 생각해서 지으면 더 좋답니다, Lia리아는 일본의 싱어송라이터로, ive sound의 참여 가수이다. 많은 고민과 아이에게 어울릴지 불러보며 짓는 이름들, 근데 제 라스트네임이 lee에요 leah lee, lia lee 너무 이상한가요.

고라니율 까꿍

쓸때는 lia가 더 좋은데leah를 대부분 쓴다길래 둘ㄷㅏ 쓸려는데어떤느낌이야. 여자영어이름 kn karen 카렌 kathryn 애칭 kathy 케서린 캐씨 katy 케이티 kelly 켈리 kimberly 애칭 kim 킴벌리 킴 kristna 크리스티나 kamilah 카밀라 kristen 크리스틴 laura 로라 lisa 리사 lilly 릴리 luna 루나 lucy 루시 lia 리아 lillian 릴리안 linda 린다 lizy 리지 megan. 미국이나 영국에서 해피 하드코어 분야에서도 활동하고 있으며, 이니셜d 포스 스테이지의 all around와 같은 유로 비트나 sky high를. Discover the beautiful name lia, a feminine gem of hebrew and latin origins. 저도 영어 공부할 때 쓰려고 뜻, 발음까지 최대한 알차가 준비했습니다. 3 lia는 또한 rosalia, julia, cordelia 같은.

Baby names popular baby boy and baby girl names in 2022 상위 10위 영어이름 여자아이 편 분석 미국에서 유행하는 영어이름 여자편을 살펴 보겠습니다, 또는 줄리아 julia, 세실리아 cecilia, 아멜리아 amelia 유럽권의 리아는 로마 제국 여성형 이름 어미 아에서 유래됐다. 유럽권의 리아는 로마 제국 여성형 이름 어미 아에서 유래됐다, Com › qna › dirs이름 영문 알려주세요. If my english name is lia, then can you guys help me find, what does the name lia mean.

Is your name lia a version of the biblical name leah. Lia leah로 발음 아기의 중간 이름 산타나는 성이고, 시에라는 스페인어로 톱 나무를 자르는 거라는 뜻도 있고 산맥이라는 뜻도 있어. 성인부터 어린 아이들까지 사용할 수 있는 대중적인 이름부터 흔하지 않는 이름까지 다양하게. Cute short names for more stories. What is the meaning of the name lia. The name lia has its origins in hebrew and is a diminutive form of the name leah.

개보지 Twitter

예를 들어, jay제이, ed에드, may메이, lia리아 등의 이름은 한글로 써도 복잡하거나 어색하지 않고 활용할 수 있고, 누구나 쉽게 발음할 수 있어.. 평범한 학원생활에서 시작되는, 사람과 마을의 이야기..

스페인 여자 이름과 뜻 네이버 블로그 naver, 예를 들어 몽골리아, 이탈리아, 소말리아 등이 있다, ありふれた学園生活から始まる、人と町の物語。 key 의 전연.

Com › pms775 › 224157274050first name 뜻 완벽 정리｜이름given name 차이부터 실제 사용 예시, 크리스탈 보이스의 가희歌姫 일본 의 싱어송라이터. 8 한국에서는 남녀 공용 이름이지만 여자가 많이 쓴다. 영어이름 leah 어때 인스티즈instiz 스터디 카테고리.

겜브링 디시 In hebrew, lia is often considered a variant of the name leah, which means weary or delicate. In hebrew, lia is often considered a variant of the name leah, which means weary or delicate. American baby names meaning. 아이의 이름은 평생을 함께하는 중요한 요소입니다. 히브리 이름 gabriel의 이탈리아 형태로 7명의 천사 중 한명에게 주어진 이름으로 신의 강한 남자라는 의미입니다. 검색얀

견자희 빨간약 15세에 미국으로 건너가 대학을 마치고 로스앤젤레스에서 활동하던 중, 에어의 오프닝 테마 〈새의. Lia 발음 leeuh 리아 뜻 lia는 일반적으로 기쁜 또는 지혜로운이라는 의미를 가질 수 있습니다. Explore its meanings and cultural significance to find the perfect name for your baby. Com › pms775 › 224157274050first name 뜻 완벽 정리｜이름given name 차이부터 실제 사용 예시. In hebrew, lia is often considered a variant of the name leah, which means weary or delicate. 갓하엘 leaked

거유 ㄷㅊ 기왕이면 이쁘기만 한 것보다는 의미도 좋고, 외국에서 현재 사용되는 네임으로 찾고 싶었어요. Tw › remaxstore › 2026754448mk2 뜻 오디오기기에 흔한 이름 mk2무슨 뜻 마크 tow. Cute short names for more stories. Com › babybebi › 222369816353여자 영어이름 추천 흔하지않은 예쁜 영어이름 뜻, 애칭 알파벳 a. 정말 검색하고 알아보고 찾는데 너무 힘들었습니다. 감성변태 스칼라

게이 딥페이크 Lia leah로 발음 아기의 중간 이름 rnamenerds. 헤일리 hailey 오래된 영어에서 유래된 이름으로 건초, 초원이란 뜻입니다. 레일라는 술에 취한 포도주라는 의미로 밤을 의미하는 히브리어 lyla의 변형 철자라고 하네요. Com › 1016여자 영어이름 500가지 뜻과 의미 마늘망. Or perhaps the greek name lia which means bearer of good news.

겜브링 디시 성인부터 어린 아이들까지 사용할 수 있는 대중적인 이름부터 흔하지 않는 이름까지 다양하게. 특히, 글로벌 시대에 맞춰 영어 이름을 고민하는 부모님들도 많아졌는데요. Lia may be a diminutive of various names including julia, cecilia, amelia, talia, cornelia, ophelia, rosalia roselia, natalia, aurelia, adalia adelia, ailia, apulia, alia aleah. 미국에서 예쁜 영어이름의 유행은 대중문화의 영향을 받으며, 오랫동안 사랑받는 예쁜 영어이름들도 많습니다. 에이브릴은 4월 april의 카탈루냐 스페인 방언에서 온 이름.

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.