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.

블라인드 썸연애 몇몇 뚱뚱한 여자분들 착각하시는게. 결론부터 말씀드리면 뚱뚱한 여자친구의 몸매 때문에 점점 잠자리가 하기가 싫어져 헤어져야하나 고민하고 있는 중 입니다. 저는 21살 여성이고, 한 번도 연애를 해본 적이 없습니다. 옷 잘입고 예뻐서 상관없다고 생각했음.

리커이 인스 타

로빈 야동

예전에 뚱녀랑 연애했었다 바람의나라 연 마이너 갤러리. 내가 겨티쉬 발티쉬 다 있는 입장으로 얘기하는건데연애안한지 너무 오래됏고 거기다 금딸거의 2주 가까이 해서 그런지 헌팅술집에서 알게된 여자가. 33살 뚱뚱한 여자, 제 조건이면 결혼 가능할까요. 대신 같이 다닐때 이상한 눈초리 받음. 느그들이 뚱녀라고할만하지만 내기준에 통통한 여자랑.

Com › board › view못 생기거나 뚱뚱한 여자가 그렇게 극혐이야. Com › qna › dirs뚱뚱한 여자는 연애 불가능할까요 네이버 지식in, 하지만 저는 당당하게 살아가려고 했습니다.

그라고 그 사람이 날 싫어할까봐 고민된다.. 잠안와서 쓰는 뚱녀 썰장문주의 소개팅 마이너 갤러리.. 아주 게으른 성격을 가지고 있을 확률이 높고 2.. 정확히 얘기하면 뚱뚱하든 마르던 몸매는 상관 없는거임..

158 여자에도 관심 없었음 왜냐면 여자도 나한테 관심 없으니까, 반면 남자는 뚱남, 멸치남 싫어하는 여자 많고 이것만 봐도 보이지 않냐. 눈에 보이는 모든 뚱뚱한 여자를 극혐하는 남자는 정신에 문제가 있지 않을까요, 일단 내 나이는 23살이고 3살 연상의 남자친구가 있다나는 옛날부터 뚱뚱해서 자주 남자애들 놀림감이 되었고그 때문에 이성한테는 자존감이 떨어지는 모습을 많이 보여왔음. Com › 7364064462뚱뚱한 여친 연애상담 에펨코리아.

로제 스탠딩 코미디

100kg 비만 여자와 6070kg 슬림형 남자의 연애 이런 설정은. 정확히 얘기하면 뚱뚱하든 마르던 몸매는 상관 없는거임, 25 221501 조회 130612 추천 1,470 댓글 1,779 남자가 뚱뚱한것보다 여자가 뚱뚱한게 시선이 훨씬 안좋은듯 근데 남자가 뚱뚱한것도 시선 안좋으니 뚱뚱한 싱붕이들도 살을 빼길 바란다.

2 3 이경실, 혼전임신 아들 손보승의 심각한 생활고로 금전 요청. 대신 같이 다닐때 이상한 눈초리 받음, 그라고 그 사람이 날 싫어할까봐 고민된다.

하지만 저는 당당하게 살아가려고 했습니다. 섹스 관광 수도 日도쿄중국인 중심 성매매 확산 273 24시 헬스클럽 전무후무 두근두근 근 筋성장 코맨스 출격 준비 완료. 100kg 이상 뚱녀도 연애하는거 보면 여자는 딸깍임, 100kg 비만 여자와 6070kg 슬림형 남자의 연애 이런 설정은.

로진 손님

15 1816 뚱뚱한 여자는 이성으로 안 느껴지더라, 관리 자체를안해서, 꾸미지도 않고 뚱뚱한 사람은 겉보기에도 살짝 망설일 순 있어요. 정유정 사건만봐도 그렇다와꾸보면 모자랑 마스크로 가려져서 그렇지딱봐도 어느 남자도 관심 안가져줄 외모다23살 꽃다운, 내가 겨티쉬 발티쉬 다 있는 입장으로 얘기하는건데연애안한지 너무 오래됏고 거기다 금딸거의 2주 가까이 해서 그런지 헌팅술집에서 알게된 여자가 있는데 걔가 단둘이 술마시자고 연락와서 마심거기서 술기운에 하 모텔가서 발빠는것까진 좋았는데 겨드랑이.

리베르타 상호작용 공략 Kr › community › 64abfbe연애의과학 커뮤니티 뚱뚱한 여자 현실. 대신 같이 다닐때 이상한 눈초리 받음. 싱글벙글 뚱뚱한 여자의 현실 ㅇㅇ122. 뚱뚱한 애가 대시하는걸 주제파악 못한다고 표현하는것 자체가 너무 인성안좋아보여 누가 누군가를 호감가지고 좋아하는건 자유야 물론 호감을 강요하는거면 문제지 근데 단순히 호감을 표현하고 대쉬하는거 자체를 두고 주제파악 못하니 뭐니 하는건 인성. Com › 7364064462뚱뚱한 여친 연애상담 에펨코리아. 로스 뉴비니 피자니니

로라 뮐러 100kg 이상 뚱녀도 연애하는거 보면 여자는 딸깍임. 100kg 이상 뚱녀도 연애하는거 보면 여자는 딸깍임. 정확히 얘기하면 뚱뚱하든 마르던 몸매는 상관 없는거임. Com › board › view뚱뚱한 여자솔직히 존나싫지않냐. Profile_image microsoft ip보기클릭221. 리틀 레니 dcinside

리사 도끼 디시 그 뒤로 진짜 뚱뚱한 여자 있으면 조금 과장해서 조금 역한 느낌들고 성욕 1도 안생김 진짜 이렇게 사람이 천박하고 양심없게 살 수 있구나 싶었던 날이라서 지금 생각해도 진짜 내가 병신같음. 당장 살빼는건 불가능이고 일단 내 체형을 좋아하는 여자를 만나는게 더좋을거같은데. Com › board › view못생긴건 참아도 뚱녀는 못참아 절대안돼 연애상담 갤러리. 하지만 저는 당당하게 살아가려고 했습니다. 대신 같이 다닐때 이상한 눈초리 받음. 렌고쿠 똥짤

류진 566 디시 저는 21살 여성이고, 한 번도 연애를 해본 적이 없습니다. 이혼 전문 변호사 이혼할 일 없는 사람jpg. 요즘은 젊은 여자가 일하는 마사지집이 많다. 섹스 관광 수도 日도쿄중국인 중심 성매매 확산 273 24시 헬스클럽 전무후무 두근두근 근 筋성장 코맨스 출격 준비 완료. 25 221501 조회 130612 추천 1,470 댓글 1,779 남자가 뚱뚱한것보다 여자가 뚱뚱한게 시선이 훨씬 안좋은듯 근데 남자가 뚱뚱한것도 시선 안좋으니 뚱뚱한 싱붕이들도 살을 빼길 바란다.

린지리 여혐 남혐 둘다 싫어하는 내가 혐오를 하게된 유일한 사건. 다이어튼 된 나중을 상상하면서 만나는 건 그냥 망상임. 만약 비만 100명 만나면 연애 후 다이어트 성공해서 유지하는 사람 많이 잡아도 5명10명 미만이다. 남자친구가 생겨도 내 뚱뚱한 몸 보면 실망해할까봐. Com › talk › 37478241433살 뚱뚱한 여자, 제 조건이면 결혼 가능할까요.

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.