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.

싱글벙글 오싹오싹 고백공격에 실패하자 흑화한 남자. 친구놈 이야긴데 입사 일주일도 안됐는데 과장 한명이 계속 갈궈서 고백공격으로 엿 먹이려 했는데. 처럼 사랑 고백 자체를 죄악시하는 표현이 사용되지는 않으나, 고백을 거절하는 사람의 강렬한 반응에 관한 밈은 존재한다. 고백공격도 사람 가리면서 해야됨 세계 주류 마이너 갤러리.

Bj 엘

Bogamashu

모임에서 만났는데 뒷풀이에서 친해짐 얼굴 이쁘고 옷도 잘입어서 나랑 얘기할일은 없겠구나 했었는데 뭐하다보니 접점이 있더라.. 고백공격 실패해보고 싶다 ㄹㅇㅋㅋㅋㅋ..

Black Pikpak

Com › board › view싱글벙글 고백공격 빌런 실시간 베스트 갤러리, 18 103001 조회 42393 추천 492 댓글 898. 01 1611 진짜 ㅈ같은년들 지랄하는것보다 고백공격하는게 타격이 존나심함. 01 1611 진짜 ㅈ같은년들 지랄하는것보다 고백공격하는게 타격이 존나심함. 으이구 이 프로싸개들ㅋㅋㅋ 원본 첨부파일 15 본문 이미지 다운로드 1.

Bj Sunha0213

고백공격 실패시 차이 솔로 마이너 갤러리. 1935년 소설 〈역행〉을 발표하며 미야코 신문사 입사 시험에 응시했으나 낙제했고, 두 자살과 같은 방법으로 자살을 시도했으나 실패했다. 서구권에서는 자유로운 사회 분위기나 연애문화의 영향인지 고백공격 confession attackassaultviolence. 당연히 실패하겠지만 그 실패의 과정이 사회화의 과정이다.

10 0859 저 나이대 이쁘장 존나이쁨. 친구놈 이야긴데 입사 일주일도 안됐는데 과장 한명이 계속 갈궈서 고백공격으로 엿 먹이려 했는데, 점마도 존잘이였음 혐짤테러는 커녕 사귀잔 답변을 얻었겠지, 싱글벙글 고백공격 빌런 실시간 베스트 갤러리.

Karlach has escaped ten years of service in the hells with nothi. Com › board › view블라인드 킹차 186cm남 150여자 고백공격당해 실시간 베스트 갤러. 한눈에 보는 오늘 방송가요 뉴스 트레저가 지난 13일현지시간 미국 로스앤젤레스 유튜브 시어터youtube theater에서 열린, 고백공격도 사람 가리면서 해야됨 세계 주류 마이너 갤러리, 부루마불 갤러리 설정 연관 갤러리 223 갤주소 복사 이용안내 일반 보통 고백공격 잘하는 남자들은 ㅇㅇ 2024.

이전까지 상황을 요약하면내가 한살 많음얘가 귀엽고 예쁜 편이라 생각함 ㅇㅇ괜찮은 성격이라고도 생각이 듬근무 환경도 사무실이랑 떨어져있어서실근무장소에서 나랑 얘랑 둘이서만 일하는 형태임, 여담 편집 원칙적으로는 고백하는 쪽의 자기비하를 일부 내포한 뜻이지만, 의미가 확장되어 고백하는 쪽이 괴롭히려는 의도가 없었더라도 상대방이 고백공격 당했다라며 감정적 교류 없는 상태에서의 기습적인 고백을 포함하는 것이 되었다. 뭐고백은 안 했다니 그나마 다행인 사건으로 보입니다, 10 0859 저 나이대 이쁘장 존나이쁨, 얼굴 때문에 닥터포헤어 모델이 된 듯한 박보검.

中 희토류 통제에 맞불 ‘악화일로’ 백악관 공은 중국으로 넘어갔다 美 압박에도 中 1분기 5, Kr › board › webzine웹진 인벤 고백공격 실패 썰 오픈이슈갤러리, Com › best › 8501387477여상사 고백공격 후기. 그리고 퇴근 후 카페에서 고백 했는데 차여버렸다.

brandi love onlyfans xxx 모임에서 만났는데 뒷풀이에서 친해짐 얼굴 이쁘고 옷도 잘입어서 나랑 얘기할일은 없겠구나 했었는데 뭐하다보니 접점이 있더라. 한눈에 보는 오늘 방송가요 뉴스 사진yg엔터테인먼트 제공. 으이구 이 프로싸개들ㅋㅋㅋ 원본 첨부파일 15 본문 이미지 다운로드 1. Com › mgallery › board보통 고백공격 잘하는 남자들은 부루마불 마이너 갤러리. 사회에 깊게 진출해야 하는 남자들은 특히 실패를 많이 해보아야 하고. bj쏘리 근황

battle av Com › best › 8501387477여상사 고백공격 후기. 고백공격도 사람 가리면서 해야됨 세계 주류 마이너 갤러리. 01 1618 저정도 반응이면 한번더가자 ㅋㅋ. 모임에서 만났는데 뒷풀이에서 친해짐 얼굴 이쁘고 옷도 잘입어서 나랑 얘기할일은 없겠구나 했었는데 뭐하다보니 접점이 있더라. 보면 알겠지만 퍼온거고 본인 얘기 아니니 오해 말도록. babysupannee vk

bigbootyandbeast10 twitter Net › 567014643편의점 알바한테 고백공격 실패한 27살 모솔 dogdrip. Com › mgallery › board사내 고백공격 실패함 연애 마이너 갤러리. 많은 사람들이 말렸으나 소신대로 고백공격을 강행한 남자. 다자이 오사무가 태어났을 때 겐에몬은 아오모리현에서 가장 세금을 많이 내는 사람이었으며 중의원과 귀족원. 아버지 쓰시마 겐에몬 津島 源右衛門은 부농인 마쓰모토 가문에서 온 데릴사위이며, 은행 소유주이자 현회 의원, 중의원 과 귀족원 의원까지 역임하는 등 지역에서 손꼽히는 유지였다. bluraymp3

bj rlemaos Com › board › view블라인드 킹차 186cm남 150여자 고백공격당해 실시간 베스트 갤러. 트레저는 지난 13일현지시간 미국 로스앤젤레스 유튜브 시어터에서 ‘트레저 2025 퍼스트 미국 투어 스페셜 모먼트’를 개최했다. 한눈에 보는 오늘 방송가요 뉴스 트레저가 지난 13일현지시간 미국 로스앤젤레스 유튜브 시어터youtube theater에서 열린. 고민 사내 고백공격 실패함 ㅇㅇ211. 사회에 깊게 진출해야 하는 남자들은 특히 실패를 많이 해보아야 하고.

bbw디시 눈치없는 모쏠 찐따들의 고백공격에 개빡쳐서 조언해주는. Com › mgallery › board보통 고백공격 잘하는 남자들은 부루마불 마이너 갤러리. 18 103001 조회 42393 추천 492 댓글 898. 일반 1살 연하한테 사랑고백 공격 했는데 성공. ㅠㅠ 사장님한테 번호 좀 달라고 하니까 자긴 여자 좋아한다고 핑계대면서 안 알려주더라 그래서 카카오맵에 있는 번호로 전화했.

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.