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.

이름 그대로 태양의 은혜가 가득한 신선한 과일들의 맛을 최대한 끌어낸 매력. Sr, 미야시타 아이, 4560, 3630. 아버지는 고등재판소 판사에 13 어머니는 국제인도 지원단체의 직원으로서, 어떤 더러운 인간에게도 굴하지 않고 정의를 관철해 온 존경할 만한 인물들이다. 시즈쿠니 후루에테모 몇 번이고 흘러내리는 빗방울에 몸이 떨려와도 差し出された拭う指先に 사시다사레타 누구우 유비사키니 내밀어진 닦는 손끝에.

Kbj 히리

Jw0109 Jv9263 차이

Kissjav 보지

귀를 기울이면 츠키시마 시즈쿠 그 녀석의 여자친구 미나세 시즈쿠 꽃들판에 피어나는 덧없음 카사사기 시즈쿠 낙제 기사의 영웅담 쿠로가네 시즈쿠 내 방이 던전의 휴식처가 되어버린 사건 시즈쿠 내 여친이 너무 성실한 처녀 빗치인 건 아리야마 시즈쿠. 그래도 카렌과 에리카가 아무리 막장스러운 짓을 해도 화내지 않는다는 것이나, 문제가 될 소지만 없으면 최대한 타협을 해 준다는 점에서 굉장히 너그러운 성격이다. 노래하는 왕자님 샤이닝 버스데이 송 시노미야 나츠키 moon.

Kazutora Leak

시원시원한 성격에 외모도 뛰어난 편이지만 어쩐지 남자 운은 따라주지 않는 여성이다.. 근데 잠깐, ave mujica 애니의 우이카는 엄청 활발하잖아.. 비술이나 사무에 뛰어난 재능을 발휘해, 요리시게를 돕는다..

8 이에 아이가 부정적으로 반응하지만, 시노미야 家 남자들 중에서 그나마 카구야를 아끼고 챙겨주기 때문에 절대로 톱의 자리에 올라도 카구야를 나쁘게 대할 가능성은 없다는 근거를 대자 부정하지. 그 외에도 millsage의 멤버인 시오미 호타루의 성우는 야쿠시지 리아이며, 일가 dumb rock. 6 본인이 말하기를 스와 묘진과는 다른 계통의 신성으로 스와 묘진을 지탱하던 존재라고 한다.

야쿠라 요모기 코토히라 나기 우메자토 치에리 하마사키 마호로 스가 라이카 시호미 호타루 시노미야 시즈쿠 시즈미 호우카, 집안은 대대로 시노미야가에 충성을 맹세하는 가문이며, 카구야를 서포트하는 인원으로서 소등부부터 계속해서 슈치인 학원에 보내지고 있다, 게임에서는 인연 에피소드 초반에서 스쿨 아이돌 활동을 반대해서 세츠나가 설득해야 했지만. 원래 딸이 스쿨 아이돌 로 활동하고 있다는 사실을 몰랐지만 2기 6화에서 나나가 직접 정체를 밝히면서 알게 된다, 소요가 좀 재수없을 수 있다는 거 아는데, 무츠미랑의 관계. 비술이나 사무에 뛰어난 재능을 발휘해, 요리시게를 돕는다.

키, 160cm 오사카 시즈쿠, 3630, 3990, 4560.. 비술이나 사무에 뛰어난 재능을 발휘해, 요리시게를 돕는다..

시노미야 시즈쿠 四宮 しずく는 게임 《화이트데이 학교라는 이름의 미궁》의 히로인 한소영 의 일본어판 이름이다. 주역 호죠 토키유키 北条時行 성우 유이카와, 청주 미야칸바이로 전국적으로 유명한 칸바이 주조 리큐어 시리즈 히자시노시즈쿠, Com › best2 › 8694872256한국 호러 게임의 일본판 현지화 명칭. 익명 사용 미니갤에 남긴 글은 작성자만 볼 수 있습니다.

Jisoo Nackt

현재는 병원에 입원된 상태로, 남은 생명이 1개월이라는 진단을 받았다. 소요가 좀 재수없을 수 있다는 거 아는데, 무츠미랑의 관계, 蒼月리코（아오츠키 리코）（2006년） 碧波시즈쿠（아오나미 시즈쿠）（2000년）（은퇴） 青沼치아사（아오누마 치아사）（1997년）（은퇴） 아오바（2005년） 青葉유우나（아오바 유우나）（2003년） 青山和希（아오야마 카즈키）（1995년）（은퇴）＝ 鮎川하루나. 시노미야 그룹 간부의 딸로, 아일랜드인 의 쿼터. Neoporte구 merise는 2021년 10월 23일 에 설립된 버츄얼 유튜버 프로덕션이다.

jisamss 디시 괴수8호 시노미야 키코루 무기 컬랙션 a. 원래 딸이 스쿨 아이돌 로 활동하고 있다는 사실을 몰랐지만 2기 6화에서 나나가 직접 정체를 밝히면서 알게 된다. Rkaijuno8 미안 시노미야, 근데 난 시노미야가 더 좋아. 시즈쿠 나루세 나루 니지산지 프로젝트 통합 이후 2019년 1분기 유즈키 로아 오노마치 하루카 카타리베 츠무구 이누이 토코 안쥬 카트리나 리제 헬레스타 와라베다 메이지 쿠도 치토세 군도 미레이 세토 미야코 오토기바라 에라 라이토 2019년 2분기 사에구사. 그녀 자신도 부모님의 영향으로 강한 정의감을 가지고 청렴결백에 목숨을 건 인간상으로 자라나게 되었다. kbj imsosorry

king power d fc2 이것이 거듭된 결과 에리카와 카렌도 점차 시즈쿠 앞에서 꼼짝 못하게 된다. 좋아요 이론 시노미야 시즈쿠는 진짜 미스미 우이카다. 당시에는 tv 애니메이션인지, 극장판인지는 미정이었다. Sr, 미야시타 아이, 4560, 3630. 이름 그대로 태양의 은혜가 가득한 신선한 과일들의 맛을 최대한 끌어낸 매력. kmib - the first casting

kissjav くぱぁ 시노미야 그룹 간부의 딸로, 아일랜드인 의 쿼터. Ave mujica 캐릭터 소개 오블리비오니스 토가와 사키코 편 ave mujica의 키보. 그래도 카렌과 에리카가 아무리 막장스러운 짓을 해도 화내지 않는다는 것이나, 문제가 될 소지만 없으면 최대한 타협을 해 준다는 점에서 굉장히 너그러운 성격이다. 그런데 입학 일주일 후에 사건이 터진다. 키, 160cm 오사카 시즈쿠, 3630, 3990, 4560. kixonair.com

kbj deep fake 이름 그대로 태양의 은혜가 가득한 신선한 과일들의 맛을 최대한 끌어낸 매력. 현재는 병원에 입원된 상태로, 남은 생명이 1개월이라는 진단을 받았다. 출생 1995년 01월 01일19950101 36세 도쿄도 신주쿠구 거주지 도쿄도 시부야구 다이칸야마초 171 오사카도 기타구 미야코지마미나미도리 1초메. 현재는 병원에 입원된 상태로, 남은 생명이 1개월이라는 진단을 받았다. 의 멤버인 스가 라이카의 성우는 타치바나 메이라고 합니다.

kmib erome 1 1기에선 공부하는 딸을 격려하는 모습으로 등장했다. 일본 편집 tva 3기 카구야 님은 고백받고 싶어 울트라 로맨틱 의 최종화 방영 후 제작이 결정되었다. 근데 잠깐, ave mujica 애니의 우이카는 엄청 활발하잖아. 이것이 거듭된 결과 에리카와 카렌도 점차 시즈쿠 앞에서 꼼짝 못하게 된다. 정장 차림의 미녀 이계사로 호전적인 성격.

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.