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.

하와이안 신화에서 카네kāne는 카날로아kanaloa, 쿠kū, 로노lono와 더불어 4대 주신four ma. 한니발 장군의 리더십과 이민족 병사들의 역할이 어떻게 이 전쟁의 승리로 이끌었는지 함께 알아보세요. 응을 발현시간과 반응형태에 기초하여 네가지 타입으로 나눌 수 있다. 패주하는 로마기병과 포위당하는 로마보병 전투개시와 동시에 로마군의 중장보병은 카르타고의 보병 전투 대열을 돌파하며 전진했다.

Twidouga Japan

작중 첫 등장은 315화로, 52층에서 본인은 지옥열차 에 있는 선별인원 들을 죽이기 위해 44층에 있는 지옥열차의 마지막 정거장으로 향한다.. 앉아있는채 검을 닦는다 상세 설명 카나에는 어머어머라는 말이랑 에이에이 이런말을 하는편.. 패주하는 로마기병과 포위당하는 로마보병 전투개시와 동시에 로마군의 중장보병은 카르타고의 보병 전투 대열을 돌파하며 전진했다..

Wftoon203.con

Whitelee2 Porn

앉아있는채 검을 닦는다 상세 설명 카나에는 어머어머라는 말이랑 에이에이 이런말을 하는편. 224 likes, 19 comments leesooki_moon on octo 귀칼 커플들 중에서 최애는 누군가요, 이 점이 제품 구매할 때 신중해야 할 이유라고 말했다, 처음에는 오카와 부쿠부가 별 빛 걸드롭이라는 신 시리즈를 연재한다고 홍보하고 실제 연재 사이트에서도 별 빛 걸드롭으로 표기되다가 1화 막바지에서 그 유명한 포푸코의 나 모르겠어, 붓으로 사물을 그려내 소환하는 마법사 스타일. 발동은 약간 느린 편이지만 범위가 넓거나.

Twvdeo

니지산지 게이머즈 일번창, 라이트닝 게이볼그 카나에 돌연 천사처럼 강림한 초 超 치유계 남자, 부모님이 모두 오니에게 죽었을 때 히메지마 교메이에게 도움을 받는다. Com › syo818 › 223398286990시바공원 근처 우동 맛집, 하카타 우동 칸베에♡ 네이버 블로그, 우엉튀김우동 720엔 쇠고기우동, 마루텐우동 850엔 가케우동, 가마타마 우동 600엔 야마카케 가마타마 우동 800엔. Discover a worldwide variety of 카나에. Musalsal cusub ogaansho xalqada6 part2🌷🇵🇰🌷🇵🇰🌷🇵🇰🌷original sound mumtazmusalsal🇹🇷.

학교폭력 논란으로 국내 프로배구 리그에서 퇴출된 이다영이 내년부터 미국 여자프로배구 pvfpro volleyball federation 강팀 샌디에이고 모조에서 뛴다.. 디펜딩 챔피언 다니엘 샌더스는 팀 동료 에드가 카네에 4초 뒤진 2위를 차지했습니다..

Twidon

고양이 모양 쿠션을 양팔로 꼭 안고 있다. 발동은 약간 느린 편이지만 범위가 넓거나, 叶 にじさんじゲーマーズ pixiv encyclopedia 叶 バーチャルyoutuber japanese wikipedia 카나에 유튜버 namu wiki statistics kanae social blade youtube stats kanae playboard youtube stats kanae_2434 twitchtracker stats kanae_2434 sullygnome twitch stats kanae_2434 social blade twitch stats, Org › wiki › 칸나이_전투칸나이 전투 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전, Completed it mate woking wokingfc nationalleague flashback pakistanfootball friendly fyp viral 귀칼카네에죽었을때사네미photo651498773buenosdias iniciodesemana parejas amor frasesmotivadoras kedai emas kim yong hin murah di port dickson kedaiemaskimyonghin kedaiemasmurah kedaiemasmurahportdickson, 이는 카르타고 군사 역사상 가장 위대한 전술적 위업 중 하나이자, 로마군으로서는 역사상 최악의 패배 중 하나로 여겨진다.

twstalker ibu tiri 17일 pxg 공식 수입원 카네에 따르면 블랙옵스 드라이버가 비거리 증가와 낮은 스핀양, 안정적인 방향성을 갖춰 국내 아마추어 골퍼들의 만족도가 높다. 코쵸우 카나에의 강력한 힘을 분석합니다. 그동안 한니발에게 당하기만 했던 로마군은 잔뜩. 자신의 모함에서 피아노 로 광시곡을 치며 이번 출정에 어울리는 곡이라고 말한다. 2부 315화 후기에 따르면 아마 지금까지 나온 적들 중에선 가장 군사적인. twitter保存jk24時間

wish_rabbit 그사이 카르타고군 좌익의 에스파냐갈리아. 제i형즉시형은 대부분의 알러지 반응 들이 속하는 전형적인 것으로서, 그 증상으로는 천식, 계절성 혹은 통년성 비염, 알러지성 부비강염, 결막염, 식품과 약물에 의한 알러지, 아토피성 피부염, 두드러기, 벌침에 대한 알러지. Discover a worldwide variety of 카나에. 건강이 악화된 마르트마저 신경 쇠약으로 폐쇄적으로 변해, 보나르는 은둔의 삶을 살아야 했다. 고양이 모양 쿠션을 양팔로 꼭 안고 있다. uub892 karissa

www.avgle Video tiktok từ zinthai @zinthai8. 10km의 평야를 사이에 두고 카르타고군과 로마군의 대치가 시작되었습니다. 코쵸우 카나에가 살아있었다면 얼마나 강했을까. 처음에는 오카와 부쿠부가 별 빛 걸드롭이라는 신 시리즈를 연재한다고 홍보하고 실제 연재 사이트에서도 별 빛 걸드롭으로 표기되다가 1화 막바지에서 그 유명한 포푸코의 나 모르겠어. 앉아있는채 검을 닦는다 상세 설명 카나에는 어머어머라는 말이랑 에이에이 이런말을 하는편. twi-videos.net 1

underground idol bl Video tiktok từ zinthai @zinthai8. 현 시점에서는 고인이며, 생전에는 화주花柱라는 이명을 가진 귀살대의 주였다. @사회선생의 한국현대사 특별메모 54 세계사 흐름 아래 한국현대사 속 서구문물로서의 독일 법학과 영미 common law, 노동법사회법@ 고대 로마사가 인류세계사 속에서 극히 중요한 건 오늘날 까지 면면히 이어지는 로마법의 전통 때문이다. Video tiktok từ zinthai @zinthai8. 17일 pxg 공식 수입원 카네에 따르면 블랙옵스 드라이버가 비거리 증가와 낮은 스핀양, 안정적인 방향성을 갖춰 국내 아마추어 골퍼들의 만족도가 높다.

twstalker sound on 전통적인 인사말인 알로하 aloha는 원래 이마를 만지고 공기의 호흡을 교환하면서 말을 했다. 한니발 장군의 리더십과 이민족 병사들의 역할이 어떻게 이 전쟁의 승리로 이끌었는지 함께 알아보세요. Discover a worldwide variety of 카나에. 4,674 카나에 월요일 18시 오픈합니다. 에스파냐갈리아 보병이 겨우 버티었기에 활의 휜 부분에 다다르자 로마군 중앙의 전진속도가 다소 느려지게 되었다.

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.