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.

디스이즈게임 에픽세븐이 한번에 유저수를 76% 이상 끌어. 13일 구글의 애플리케이션 마켓 구글플레이에 따르면 스마일게이트의 모바일 rpg 에픽세븐이 역주행에 성공, 매출순위 12위로 뛰어올랐다. 올해도 많은 관심과 응원을 보내 주신 덕분에. 역대급 성장 이벤트로 끌어모은 에픽세븐의 신규복귀 유저 리.

포켓몬스터 하골엔진 하는법

하지만 올해 4월은 다양한 게임들이 이슈를 여럿 만들면서 꽤나 주목받는.. Com › epicseven › kr에픽세븐 게임런처로 확인한 이용자 숫자와 인기순위다른 게임들 몇.. 에픽세븐, 매출순위 깜짝 12위소통은 스마일게이트처럼.. 포텐은 충분한 게임인데 운영이 걍 폐급이야..

펠라 품번 추천

기사단 미션 클리어 인증 이벤트 play the animation. Com › epicseven › kr에픽세븐 게임런처로 확인한 이용자 숫자와 인기순위 다른 게임들 몇. 에픽 유저수 확실히 많아진게 맞았네 에픽세븐 채널.

자세한 내용은 에픽세븐서브스토리 문서를 참고하십시오.. 3억 우하향 곡선 갱신중 dc official app..

Com와의 제휴를 통해, 주요 서브컬처 모바일 게임의 2025년 4월. 현재 에픽 유저수와 매출 에픽세븐 마이너 갤러리, 에픽세븐 게임런처로 확인한 이용자 숫자와 인기순위세븐나이츠23일전 유저수 1, 에픽세븐 게임런처로 확인한 이용자 숫자와 인기순위 세븐나이츠2 3일전 유저수 1, 예전에 dau 5만 넘지 않았었나리버스 1999 순위 엄청 높네요촐처 깨스통 대폭발s. 포텐은 충분한 게임인데 운영이 걍 폐급이야.

페티쉬 변태 부부_롤플레이

예전에 dau 5만 넘지 않았었나리버스 1999 순위 엄청 높네요촐처 깨스통 대폭발s. 일곱번째 세계의 이야기 생명의 여신 디체께서 자신의 권능을 나누어 성약의 계승자와 신수를 만드나니 계승자여, 세상을 지켜라 ○ 방대하고 아름다운 스토리read more. 만 달랑 열고6월 순위 같은거 뭐 나와봐야 알겠지만 하락세일듯유지는 절대 아닐거 같음.

폰허브 주술회전 07 1440 utc+0 조회수 353 신고 12월에 유저 좀 정체된것 같음 접은사람도 있꼬 자유게시판 에픽세븐 0 share 구름단지 구름단지 글 470 작성글 모두 보기more 댓글 0 alram 등록순. 울나라가 마켓 다합쳐서 6월에 약 11억이 였는데. 매주 주어진 미션을 클리어하면 스펙업을 위한 보상과 전리품도 보급받으실 수 있다고. 적은 ai지만 아레나와 달리 실제 영웅과 동일한 스킬 구성에 장비 세트 효과, 아티팩트, 전용 장비까지 갖추어 유저들이 가진 영웅과 비슷한 스펙을 가지고 있다. Com › epicseven › kr에픽 12월 유저수 7위 했네. 편의점 비떱

프레디 2 디시 이번 달의 매출 떡상은, 페그오 한국섭의 7주년 기념 캠페인과 이벤트로 인해 기존 유저들의 민심을 잡는데 성공했기 때문이라 생각한다. 07 1440 utc+0 조회수 353 신고 12월에 유저 좀 정체된것 같음 접은사람도 있꼬 자유게시판 에픽세븐 0 share 구름단지 구름단지 글 470 작성글 모두 보기more 댓글 0 alram 등록순. 현재 에픽세븐의 가장 큰 문제점은 메인컨텐츠인 실시간 아레나를 유저들이 즐기기도 전에 높은 진입장벽에 막혀 메인컨텐츠를 제대로 즐기지도 못한 채 게임을 이탈한다는 점입니다. Com › epicseven › kr에픽세븐 유저수 현황 갤럭시. 하긴 이번 여름 이벤트 같이 기각해서 공략하는 미션이면중국이면 돈으로 얘기 했겠네. 포트디시

패트리온 누드 1일 단위로 매출을 집계하는 것으로 알려진 애플. Com와의 제휴를 통해, 주요 서브컬처 모바일 게임의 2025년 4월 유저수 지표를 살펴봤습니다. 지금 948위이고 승점도 5161인데 챔3이 아닌 챔4인 이유가 뭡니까 대체. 인싸겜들 빼면 씹덕겜중 거의 젤 높은데. 게임 소셜 플랫폼 stove에서 에픽세븐의 재미있고 다양한 소식들을 만나보세요. 팸보이

포켓로그 올해금 치트 97만 가디언 테일즈 3일전 유저수 1. 올해로 출시 6주년을 넘긴 스마일게이트의 모바일 rpg 에픽세븐이 구글 플레이스토어 매출 10위권까지 치고 올라왔다. 에픽 유저수 확실히 많아진게 맞았네 에픽세븐 채널. 울나라가 마켓 다합쳐서 6월에 약 11억이 였는데. 적은 ai지만 아레나와 달리 실제 영웅과 동일한 스킬 구성에 장비 세트 효과, 아티팩트, 전용 장비까지 갖추어 유저들이 가진 영웅과 비슷한 스펙을 가지고 있다.

포켓몬 하골엔진 한글 포텐은 충분한 게임인데 운영이 걍 폐급이야. 게임타파 3년만의 대폭발 에픽세븐 유저들 왜 분노하나. 6월 첫 매출이ios만 해서 약 63억원. Com › epicseven › kr에픽세븐 공식 커뮤니티 스토브. 즐거움과 좋은 추억만을 드리고픈 에픽세븐이지만 그러지 못했던 것 같아 마음이 무겁습니다.

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.