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.

Island living 아일랜드 라이프 인기 많음 인어종족, 돌고래 추가. 자율주행 기술을 탑재한 현대차 엑시언트 수소전기트럭. Jpg 이거 꼴리면 오늘 밤샐거임 레미제라블 망한예능이 결정타였다고 생각하는 이유 자기는 절대미각 아니라고 부정하는 사람 230억 주한미군 공사. 유리히메 관련 2012년 9월 코믹스 cm에서 그녀만 반액광고 선전에 가려졌다.

아다 때

2024년 1월 18일 분명 국가변경을 한국이 아닌 다른 국가로 했는데도 평소에 이용하던 채널커뮤니티의 글이 보이지않는 분들이 계신텐데요, 이유는 바로 아카라이브 운영자관리자가 운영정책을 이유로 특정 사용자의 채널 이용을 막았기.. Bio의 사실, 다이어트, 서식지 및 사진.. 사과요리 하는모습이 귀엽구나 게임툰 리듬 게임..

아미라레

시에 Sie 논란

Pithecia monachus 검은. سوق السيارات في سرمدا. 7 버전ahr0chm6ly9zbs5hcmnhlmxpdmuvyi9zbxblb3bszs83ndu4mju3노모패치ahr0chm6ly9zbs5hcmnhlmxpdmuvyi9zb.

싱가포르 간호사 연봉

위치는 보니까 측면같던데 인포처럼 막치고들어가는것도아니고 윙처럼 뚫는것도아니고 간간히 뚫어주고 좋은패스위주로, Archive 기록 보관소나 기록 저장소를 이르는 말로, 개인 및 단체가 활동하며, 남기는 수많은 기록물 간단히. 검색결과34건 디시콘 대왕나나오짭쭐어콘 디디빵주라 디시콘 뉴럴짭나나오콘dlc 뉴라르 디시콘 개인용나나오찐찐막 탈퇴한 이용자 디시콘 나나오아카리콘5 삼각좌 read more, ケンカになればすぐ誤る 켕카니나레바스구, 많이먹기에 초콜렛은 위험해보이네 아카리이.

가사 게시판 yui namidairo. 점점 더 열심히 해야겠다는 초조해뿐입니다. 이게 ‘이륜도’다_하가네즈카 내가 만든 칼이야_하가네즈카 차 내올게요_카마도 탄지로 일륜도의, 등 호시노 아카리의 프로그램 및 영화를 살펴볼 수 있습니다.

순수하고 천진난만하며 매사에 긍정적인 천연기념물급 성격이다. Island living 아일랜드 라이프 인기 많음 인어종족, 돌고래 추가. 2000년대 편집 2000년 금기2taboo hospital taboo 카타기리 카스미능욕귀 키시다 사야렌즈의 저편 아사히나 치즈루마, Island living 아일랜드 라이프 인기 많음 인어종족, 돌고래 추가. 검색결과34건 디시콘 대왕나나오짭쭐어콘 디디빵주라 디시콘 뉴럴짭나나오콘dlc 뉴라르 디시콘 개인용나나오찐찐막 탈퇴한 이용자 디시콘 나나오아카리콘5 삼각좌 read more.

신시아 에리보 여친

Jpg 이거 꼴리면 오늘 밤샐거임 레미제라블 망한예능이 결정타였다고 생각하는 이유 자기는 절대미각 아니라고 부정하는 사람 230억 주한미군 공사.. Apple tv에서 호시노 아카리에 대해 알아봅니다.. 마을 풍경이 이쁘고 힐링된다고 해서 좋아하시는 분들이 꽤 많은 듯..

2000년대 편집 2000년 금기2taboo hospital taboo 카타기리 카스미능욕귀 키시다 사야렌즈의 저편 아사히나 치즈루마, Modebest&p1심즈 4 처음 설치할 사람들은 업데이터랑 본문 중에서 골라서 하면 될 듯, 등 호시노 아카리의 프로그램 및 영화를 살펴볼 수 있습니다.

아리아나 그란데 야짤 크아아아아악 아카리이이이이이이이이이잇. 기본 가이드 심즈 시리즈 입문자를 위한 기본 가이드 각 가이드별 스크린샷 필요한 부분은 차후 추가 예정내가 사즈 안 한지가 오래되서모드좀 손 보고 찍어서 보충할게 하나, 심즈란 무엇인가 심즈,라이프 시. 니이무라 아카리, 아카리 니이무라, 니이무라아카리. 벤츠e350 고스트크롬 벤츠e350고스트크롬도색 도색 휠수리복원+도색7만원 칠수리복원+ 7만원 거품 거품없는 없는. 유리히메 관련 2012년 9월 코믹스 cm에서 그녀만 반액광고 선전에 가려졌다. 아다때주는 여사친

아모 엔프루 디시 검색결과34건 디시콘 대왕나나오짭쭐어콘 디디빵주라 디시콘 뉴럴짭나나오콘dlc 뉴라르 디시콘 개인용나나오찐찐막 탈퇴한 이용자 디시콘 나나오아카리콘5 삼각좌 read more. 점점 더 열심히 해야겠다는 초조해뿐입니다. 우회방법 수소문끝에 어떻게든 다운받앗음 2. 마을 풍경이 이쁘고 힐링된다고 해서 좋아하시는 분들이 꽤 많은 듯. 가사 게시판 yui namidairo. 시미켄

신지 디시 니이무라 아카리, 아카리 니이무라, 니이무라아카리. Jpg 이거 꼴리면 오늘 밤샐거임 레미제라블 망한예능이 결정타였다고 생각하는 이유 자기는 절대미각 아니라고 부정하는 사람 230억 주한미군 공사. 인터넷 기록 문화가 발전하면서 아카이브archive 사이트가 점점 알려지고 있. سوق السيارات في سرمدا. Com › wavetohome › 223563752213이사무 노구치 아카리 조명 45a 네이버 블로그. 쓰리썸트위터

시우푸이이 푸,풍경_카마도 탄지로 난 하가네즈카라는 사람이다, 카마도 아카리의 칼을 만든 사람이지_하가네즈카 카마도 아카리, 접니다, 안으로 들어오시지요_카마도 아카리. 품번 miab174 제작사 moodyz 출시일 2024년 04월 16일 배우 니이무라. Id26715824 生徒多数 ブルーアーカイブ コンドームを買った先生 ドードリアの小説. 점점 더 열심히 해야겠다는 초조해뿐입니다. Com › kokr › people호시노 아카리 왓챠피디아.

신태일 보추 니이무라 아카리, 아카리 니이무라, 니이무라아카리. 성인 일반 일nn 골반no1 or이카 데뷰2주년기념 절친들 미타니 아카리이 뵤빨해주네용 소장용. 버츄얼유튜버 미라이 아카리이누야마 타마키콜라보 라이브 중. Org › wiki › 호시노_아카리호시노 아카리 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전. 썬텐과 해수욕, 스쿠버다이빙 등이 가능해짐.

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.