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.

장혁은 중대 발표를 하며 자신이 리더 자격 미달이라고 털어놓는다. 정치에 처음부터 관심이 있어서 정외과에 들어간 게 아니고, 성적에 맞추다보니. 고창석이 장혁을 밀어내고 리더에 등극, 멤버들에게 폭풍 갑질을 한다. 앞서, 6인방은 이날의 점심을 걸고 5홀과 6홀 경기에 돌입했던 터.

Kuzu V 53

Kuzu Go

뉴스엔 김명미 기자 고창석이 장혁을 밀어내고 리더에 등극, 멤버들에게 폭풍 갑질을 한다.. 유명 연예인들의 좌파우파중도 정치성향을 공개 발언 근거로 분류한 페이지입니다.. 6 고창석 관리자에 의해서 블라인드된 게시글입니다.. 이밖에도 문정희, 조우진, 고창석, 현봉식 등 주변인물들을 연기한 배우들도 마치 그 자리에 있었던 사람들 마냥 제몫을 다한다..

Kuzu Sex X

6 고창석 관리자에 의해서 블라인드된 게시글입니다.. 2019년 2월 8일이 되자 셀트리온 측에서 신고했는지 삭제.. 스포츠조선닷컴 이우주 기자 갈 데까지 간다에서 고창석이 골프 대결에서 패배해 쫄쫄 굶게 되자, 승리를 거머쥔 상대팀 인교진에게 분노한다..

Kpop Gay Sex Twitter

Korean Teen Couple Porn

아버지는 서울대학교 출신, 어머니는 연세대학교 출신, 형 고창현은 변호사 이고 10, 누나는 조지타운 대학교 의 언어학 교수. 12 오랫동안 부산광역시 사상구 모라동 주공아파트 와 북구 화명동 에서 살다가 낙동고등학교 를 졸업하고 동아대학교 사회과학대학 정치외교학과 에 입학하였다, Com › hosunews › 223847688700고창석 미역 양식장 출신 과거 고백&mldr. 유명 연예인들의 좌파우파중도 정치성향을 공개 발언 근거로 분류한 페이지입니다. 아버지는 서울대학교 출신, 어머니는 연세대학교 출신, 형 고창현은 변호사 이고 10, 누나는 조지타운 대학교 의 언어학 교수.

ks 중고차 수출 디시 고창석은 그물을 끌어올리며 남다른 안정감을 선보였고, 현지 선장도 그의 능력을 높이 평가했다. 집은 문현동 달동네 꼭대기 44 에 위치해 있었고, 샤워기도 없어서 항상 찬물에 바가지로 샤워를 했어야 했다. 고창석이 더 마블스 찍은 박서준 조롱하는 모습 상업영화. 박서준도 헐리우드가서 금의환양 할 줄 알았겠지. 02 0334 권오중 나올줄 알았는뎈ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 에어컨도 2020. korean super rare thisvid

korea bj cam 본래 실존인물인 엄복동 을 주인공으로 둔 저예산 영화에 어울리는 시나리오를. 5월 5일 방송되는 mbc 예능 프로그램 ‘푹 쉬면 다행이야’연출 김명진. 스포츠조선닷컴 이우주 기자 갈 데까지 간다에서 고창석이 골프 대결에서 패배해 쫄쫄 굶게 되자, 승리를 거머쥔 상대팀 인교진에게 분노한다. Com › hosunews › 223847688700고창석 미역 양식장 출신 과거 고백&mldr. 고창석 관리자에 의해서 블라인드된 게시글입니다. koreanbj_bot

korea pikpak 26 0946 배우 고창석 근황ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 아름따다 조회 수 246798 추천 수 432 댓글 247 s. 25때 여자 저격수 북한 선전용 기록은 있으나 교차검증은 안됐다. 포텐 터짐 최신순 유머움짤이슈 움짤 2022. 고창석, 장혁 밀어내고 리더 되더니 갑질 논란결국 눈물까지 푹다행 뉴스엔 원문 기사전송 20250504 1417 0 0 ai챗으로 요약 뉴스엔 김명미 기자 고창석이 장혁을 밀어내고 리더에 등극, 멤버들에게 폭풍 갑질을 한다. 아니 고창석은 김낙수 형 역할로 설명도 있는데 혹시 안. korean fantrie porn

korea xhams 레알 개오바였음 고창석은 자첫이라 이정도일줄은 몰랐는데 샤우팅듣고 감동 다 깨짐. 몰래 촬영한 듯한 구도 때문에 불법 촬영 의혹이 제기됐다. Com › best › 5342991927배우 고창석 근황ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 포텐 터짐 최신순 에펨코리아. 엉덩이 대역 없이 여배우 앞에서 노출 연기했다가 게이 이상형 차트 1위한 손석구 이날 손석구는 게이가 뽑은 남자 연예인 투표 1위를 차지한 것을 언급해 눈길을 끌었다. 그 후 오달수의 논란이 불거진 2018년 2월 21일 광고판이 교체되었는데 부산 경찰청에 의하면 오달수의 논란 때문이 아닌 원래 이때쯤 교체될 예정이었다고 한다.

koreangay Com › entertainment › 20241120고창석, 인성 논란 터졌다인교진 저격 xxx 같은 놈 갈데까지. 무도 환영 짤과 명대사로 고창석의 감동적인 공연을 감상하고, 감성을 더하다. 02 0334 권오중 나올줄 알았는뎈ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 에어컨도 2020. 앞서, 6인방은 이날의 점심을 걸고 5홀과 6홀 경기에 돌입했던 터. 2019년 2월 8일이 되자 셀트리온 측에서 신고했는지 삭제.

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.