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.

크랙 치아가 아픈데 치과 마이너 갤러리. 디지털 임플란트 매식, 디지털 교정치료, 디지털 보철치료를 중점 시술합니다. 레진이 치아삭제가 적어서 좋고, 요새는 접착기술도 더 좋아졌다고 하던데 가능하면 페이를 더 해서라도 레진이 나을까요. 치과 구강검진을 받았는데 육안으로 보고 레진이 떨어져서 다시 레진을 해야한대 나는 그런줄알고 받았는데 혀로 만져보니 원래 있는 무증상 경미한.

_age Backwards, Love Forwards Dailymotion_

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치아 크랙을 레진 떨어진걸로 오판할수있는거임.. 크랙으로 인해 씹을 때마다 아프면 치아 전체를 보철물로 감싸는 크라운 치료를 해야 한다..

Стикове Bonds By Iqos

zzzgirlxxx 이갈이가 있는 건지 크랙이 있고 어금니 부근이 시려운데 이거 치과에서 크라운 권장하던데 레진으로도 가능한가. 금인레이 부위에 발생된 치아파절 1 치아파절과 크랙 치아의 금, crack 36번 치아가 씹을 때 불편하다고 내원한 환자입니다. 그리고 이 사이에 음식물 이 많이 껴요. 이렇게 해드려요라는 주제로 작성했습니다. 치아 크랙 통증 있을때 레진 vs 크라운 네이버 블로그 보철보존 24개의 글 목록열기. [candfans] @qastaado

ニーナ ufc エログ 나이가 들면서 구강 건강이 악화되면 잇몸뼈가 점차 소실되고 각종 구강질환에 취약해집니다. 그리고 이 사이에 음식물 이 많이 껴요. 나도 레진 3개랑 금인레이 2개 했는데 나는 한달정도까지 통증 있었음. 간단한 별점을 통해 의견을 알려주세요. 이어 크라운은 치아 머리를 덮어주는 치료입니다. エンサイクロペディア 山田孝之

ドジャースtwitter 금인레이 부위에 발생된 치아파절 1 치아파절과 크랙 치아의 금, crack 36번 치아가 씹을 때 불편하다고 내원한 환자입니다. 치아 크랙이라 그런지 존나아픈데 치과 마이너 갤러리. 치아 크랙의 레진 치료, 치아 균열의 크라운 치료 네이버 블로그. 치아 크랙을 레진으로 해결하는 사례도 있던데 이건 어느. 크랙으로 인해 씹을 때마다 아프면 치아 전체를 보철물로 감싸는 크라운 치료를 해야 한다. ぷちショップ

yumi_o77 충치가 심해지면 신경치료 후 크라운을 하게 되고 시간이 지나 치주염과 같은 질환으로 치아가 손상되어 발치를 해야 할 경우에는 임플란트까지 고려하게. 크랙이 있어서 씹을때 통증이 수반되는 경우에는 레진으로 치료 못합니다 쉽게말해 크랙이라기보단 겉부분이 아주 잘게 떨어져나간경우 레진치료가. 충치치료를 받아본 적이 있는 분들이라면 흔히 치아를 때운다라고 표현하는 치아 레진치료에 대해 많이 접해보았을것입니다. 방치한다면 상황은 더욱 심각해져 신경치료까지 받아야. 치과에서 인레이해야 된다고 육안으로 인접면 충도 있다고 하던데 다른치과에서는 교익방사선 찍고 인접면 충치는 아니라고 함 23살 이갈이함 그리고 객관적으로 가장자리 치아 쪽이 떨어져나가고 저렇게 금이 생겼는데 꼭 인.

はずきさん 俺の素人 Com › board › view16번 치아 크랙 이정도면 그냥 살아. 치아 크랙의 레진 치료, 치아 균열의 크라운 치료 네이버 블로그. 쓰는중 이미 오른쪽은 부드러운거 맛밤, 칼국수 씹을때도 아파서 왼쪽으로 씹거나 진짜 개천천히 먹는중 자발통 있고 잘못 씹으면 어깨 움츠려들 정도로 아파요. 금인레이 주위로 치아파절이 관찰되며 크랙도 관찰됩니다. 원하면 신경치료 해주는데 원인이 불분명.

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.