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.

4살선물 리스트는 아이의 성장 발달과 흥미를 고려하여 다양한 선택지를 제공합니다. 아무리 운동해도 평생 따라다니는 옆구리살 ㅠㅠ 이제는 뺄때가 되었답니다. 오늘은 4살 남자아이와 여자아이 각각에게 딱 맞는 생일선물 추천 을 해드릴게요. 역할놀이 주방놀이 세트 모방을 즐기는 4세.

이서진 키 디시

이어커프 디시

이야기시네마에는 한글로 된 세계명작동화와 쌍둥이 책, 쌍둥이 이야기 팩이 영어와 중국어 버전으로도 있어서 외국어학습을 시작하기에도 좋고.. 어떤 장난감이 4살 남자아이와 여자아이 모두에게 적합할까요.. 4살 남아를 위한 완벽한 선물 아이디어 가이드 아이들은 지속적으로 성장하고 변화하는 시기에 있으며, 특히 4살 남아는 호기심이 왕성하고 세상에 대한 탐구가 활발한 나이입니다..

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연령별로 세분화된 추천 선물로 고민을 해결해 드려요, 만 4세 유아 생일선물로 추천하는 역할놀이 장난감. 4살여아선물 말하는 똘랑이 아기인형 장난감.

이 시기에 적합한 선물을 고르면 아이의 신체적, 정서적, 인지적 발달에 긍정적인 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다. Com › entry › 4살어린이날선물4살 어린이날 선물 추천 30가지 lifeforoneday. 더쉬운찬 더 쉬운 한끼를 위한 최고의 레시피 on instagram 와전복양 실화인가요, 4살여아 생일선물용 폭신폭신한 고마핑 봉제인형 6세 혼자놀기 4살여아 소꿉놀이 민트옷 베이비 인형 산타선물 6세 4살여아 자장가 멜로디 애착인형 콩지래빗 육아인형.

이주미 변호사 디시

지금 뭘 가지고 노는 걸 좋아하는지 아는 게 도움이 될 거예요, 더쉬운찬 더 쉬운 한끼를 위한 최고의 레시피 on instagram 와전복양 실화인가요. Gorillamultigym_yeonsinnae on j 안녕하세요. 4살 아이의 발달 단계와 안전성, 흥미를 모두 고려하여 선별한 인기 장난감과 교육 완구 추천입니다, Gorillamultigym_yeonsinnae on j 안녕하세요. 다양한 종류의 장난감을 살펴보고 아이에게 가장 적합한 선물을 선택하세요.

4살선물 리스트는 아이의 성장 발달과 흥미를 고려하여 다양한 선택지를 제공합니다. 가가스토어 알파 우주기지 자동차놀이 read more. 오늘은 4살 남자아이와 여자아이 각각에게 딱 맞는 생일선물 추천 을 해드릴게요, 역할 놀이 장난감 상상력과 사회성 up, 만 4세 유아 생일선물로 추천하는 역할놀이 장난감. 우리 아이에게 딱 맞는 선물, 함께 찾아보세요.

이아이 아헤가오 사랑인 한쪽다리는 몇년전 슬개골탈구 수술을 했는데, 나머지 한쪽다리도 3기라고裸. 연령별로 세분화된 추천 선물로 고민을 해결해 드려요. 작품의 컨셉 자체가 가볍고 개그물이라면 소설에서도 충분히 제4의 벽을 마음껏 활용할 순 있지만, 전체 소설의 장르 중 거기에 해당하는 작품의 비중은 정말 적다. 여기서는 다양한 4살 선물의 추천과 어떤 점을 고려해야 하는지에 대해 자세히 알아보겠습니다. 모두바에서는 올 크리스마스 모든 아이들이 받고 싶어할 최고의 선물 28가지를 선정했습니다. 이세돌 굴 결론

이세계아이돌 오디션 4살여아 생일선물용 폭신폭신한 고마핑 봉제인형 6세 혼자놀기 4살여아 소꿉놀이 민트옷 베이비 인형 산타선물 6세 4살여아 자장가 멜로디 애착인형 콩지래빗 육아인형. 모두바에서는 올 크리스마스 모든 아이들이 받고 싶어할 최고의 선물 28가지를 선정했습니다. 늘 맘에 걸렸고 살을 4키로대로 빼는게 목표였는데 워낙. 만 4세 유아 생일선물로 추천하는 역할놀이 장난감. 오늘은 4살 남자아이와 여자아이 각각에게 딱 맞는 생일선물 추천 을 해드릴게요. 이상형월드커1

이탈리아포르노 🙏 초4남 크리스마스선물 고민 엄마의고민 레고 it기기 경험 선물추천 크리스마스 산타할아버지 메리크리스마스 초4남 크리스마스 선물, 뭘 해줘야 할까. 여기서는 다양한 4살 선물의 추천과 어떤 점을 고려해야 하는지에 대해 자세히 알아보겠습니다. 팝콘 카트와 레고 화염 부품, 그리고 팝콘 장수와 소방관 미니피겨를 이용해 상상력을 마음껏 펼쳐 무궁무진한 놀이를 즐길 수 있답니다. 이번 글에서는 제가 직접 고민하고 경험한 다양한 선물 아이디어와 구매 팁, 그리고 각 연령대별 추천 선물 리스트를 구체적이고 풍부하게 소개합니다. 밝은 색, 캐릭터 포장지, 리본 등으로 시각 자극을 주면 개봉하는 순간부터 아이가 더 즐거워할 수 있어요. 이주은 레전드

이재명 키 디시 때로는 ‘이거 좋아하더라’는 짧은 기억 하나가 가장 완벽한 선물을 이끌어냅니다. 초등 저학년에게는 레고와 그림책, 중학년에게는 보드게임과 과학 실험 키트, 고학년에게는 코딩 키트와 diy 공예 용품까지 다양한 아이디어를 소개합니다. 최고의 oad 자기 주도형 선물장난감 4살 남자아이. 3살 4살 5살어린이집생일선물베스트, 생일선물문구추천. 우리 아이에게 딱 맞는 선물, 함께 찾아보세요.

이예빈 치어리더 결혼 선물 하나를 고르기 어려울 때, 이 리스트를 가볍게 훑어보시고 아이의 성향에 맞는 걸 떠올려보세요. 원앤원 콩지래빗 가족 봉제인형, 1세트 4. Kr › 4살선물을위한완벽4살 선물을 위한 완벽 가이드 아이의 꿈을 실현하는 선택. 초등 저학년에게는 레고와 그림책, 중학년에게는 보드게임과 과학 실험 키트, 고학년에게는 코딩 키트와 diy 공예 용품까지 다양한 아이디어를 소개합니다. 어떤 장난감이 4살 남자아이와 여자아이 모두에게 적합할까요.

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.