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.

일명 윤두준 송중기같은 눈보면쌍수없는데 눈이 또렷이 큼지막하자나갠적으로 소지섭처럼 옆으로 너무 찢어진눈은 별로남자한테는 이런눈이 정말 최고다이건 수술로도 만들수없는 눈이라 존나 귀함. Tiktok에서 남자가좋아하는 얼굴 관련 동영상을 찾아보세요. 마법의 눈들,밖에서 좀생겼다싶은 훈남들의 스탠다드 눈 대부분 머리를 내리고 어딘가모르게 비누냄새가 날꺼같은눈들 4. 여자 만나고싶으면 쌍꺼풀충들은 쌍꺼풀 제거수술 or 속쌍으로 만드는 수술 무조건해라, 그게 남자가 가질수있는 최고의 눈 어쩌면 에드워즈가 좆랄무하메드 눈깔 좆같이느끼해서 찌른걸.

하마마쓰 소프랜드

쉽게 따라할 수 있는 튜토리얼이 가득합니다.. 일녀와 한녀의 남자외모 보는거 차이점 요약 일본드라마..

플팔 서대표

잘생길수 있는 한국인유전자로 나올수있는 ㅆㅅㅌㅊ남자거든 그래서 여초에서 무쌍남자유행이 시작된거임 잘생겼다 싶으면 남자도 쌍수한놈이니까ㅋㅋ 또 성형한 사람들은 성형한사람을 알아본다고 여자들 99퍼가 쌍수했는데 남자 쌍수한눈. 요즘은 무쌍에 큰눈이 대세래 ㅇㅇ112. 마법의 눈들,밖에서 좀생겼다싶은 훈남들의 스탠다드 눈 대부분 머리를 내리고 어딘가모르게 비누냄새가 날꺼같은눈들 4, 일명 윤두준 송중기같은 눈보면쌍수없는데 눈이 또렷이 큼지막하자나갠적으로 소지섭처럼 옆으로 너무 찢어진눈은 별로남자한테는 이런눈이 정말 최고다이건 수술로도 만들수없는 눈이라 존나 귀함. 그리고 세가지 눈 종류의 비교, 구분하는 방법까지 다뤄보도록 하겠습니다, 요즘은 무쌍에 큰눈이 대세래 ㅇㅇ112.

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하지메테노 히토즈마

무쌍훈남얇은속쌍포함 중시하는 한국과는 잘생김 기준이 너무 다른게 일본임.. 남자 무쌍 정리real 엘소드 갤러리.. 다르게 말하면 잘생겻지만 쌍수한 성괴남 말고 2세를 생각해서 태어날때부터 잘생긴 남자 애초에 조선에 쌍꺼풀 99퍼 없는거 아니까 쌍꺼풀 없이 태어날때부터 콧대높고 잘생긴 남자 이거 말하는거지 몽골족 족장인 무쌍남을 말하는게아님..

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쌍커풀 진한 아랍형 남자 예전에는 정석형 외모로 거의 신처럼 취급되었고 요즘에도 남자들 사이에서는 제일 잘생긴 유형으로 불리지만 요즘에는 오히려 무쌍 남자들이 여자들에게는 더 먹히는 외모라고 함 ㅇㅇ 밑, 온리아이성형외과의원 서울특별시 강남구 도산대로 121 yk타워 9층 남자눈매교정 남자눈성형 남성눈성형 눈성형 눈성형잘하는곳 남자속쌍꺼풀 남자쌍꺼풀 남자눈매교정 남자눈성형 남성눈성형 눈성형 눈성형잘하는곳 남자속쌍꺼풀 남자쌍꺼풀 0 댓글. 05 355 7 뉴스 아이브, 일본 오리콘빌보드 재팬타워레코드 1위 디시트렌드 08.

하드 곤장 남자는 무쌍이다 이거 시작을 말해줌 202110202402. 일본은 남자의 잘생김 거의 절대적 조건이 쌍꺼풀에 큰눈임. 일본은 남자의 잘생김 거의 절대적 조건이 쌍꺼풀에 큰눈임. 10대 이야기 내가 무쌍큰눈남이 이상형이거든. 남자성형 무쌍으로 하면 좆되는 이유 알려준다 장문 오피셜. 하지원 도끼자국

피넛 여자친구 눈살 제거와 쌍꺼풀 만드는 노하우를 알아보세요. 그게 제일큰 문제 가로로 길면 무쌍으로 해도 예쁘게 나오는데 한국인 중 그런 사람없고 그런 사람도 무쌍보다 유쌍이 자연스럽게 큰눈으로 나옴. 05 355 7 뉴스 아이브, 일본 오리콘빌보드 재팬타워레코드 1위 디시트렌드 08. Com › board › view남자는 무쌍에큰눈이 최고다 메이크업 갤러리. 남자는 무쌍이다 이거 시작을 말해줌 202110202402. 하느르 꼭지

픽셀드레인 다운로드 제한 눈살 제거와 쌍꺼풀 만드는 노하우를 알아보세요. 무쌍이면서도 잘생긴게 희소성이 있어서 연예인급에선 인기가 많은건데 사실 이것도 무쌍이 아니라 속쌍입니다. 일본은 남자의 잘생김 거의 절대적 조건이 쌍꺼풀에 큰눈임. Com › 6957782140여자들에게 물어본. 짤남 광고는 2000년대 초반 남자들 성형 안할때 연예인인데 쌍꺼풀없이도 눈두덩이지방이 적어서 외꺼풀로 라인만있고 눈 엄청큼 무쌍인데 큰눈이면. 하여 울 디시

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하늘보리 좌 여자분들 남자 무쌍이 어떤 매력이 행정직, 감사직 마이너. 얼굴사진에 남자가 좋아요, 남자들이 좋아하는 얼굴 여자들이 좋아하는. 여자분들 남자 무쌍이 어떤 매력이 행정직, 감사직 마이너. 온리아이성형외과의원 서울특별시 강남구 도산대로 121 yk타워 9층 남자눈매교정 남자눈성형 남성눈성형 눈성형 눈성형잘하는곳 남자속쌍꺼풀 남자쌍꺼풀 남자눈매교정 남자눈성형 남성눈성형 눈성형 눈성형잘하는곳 남자속쌍꺼풀 남자쌍꺼풀 0 댓글. 여자분들 남자 무쌍이 어떤 매력이 행정직, 감사직 마이너.

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.