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.

근데 그런 성실한 2030남자 대다수가 이렇게 욕먹어야하는 게 옳은 걸까요. 그는 오랜 기간 자신이 ‘1인분의 삶’ 을 해내지 못할 것이라는 우울과 강박에 시달렸다. 네이버 블로그 ♧대한민국을 다시 위대하게♧ 17개의 글 목록열기. 네이버 블로그 ♧대한민국을 다시 위대하게♧ 17개의 글 목록열기.

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불편하실수도 있지만 이게 2030남성의 속마음입니다, 그러니 2030 남성이 우경화됐다면 그건 좌파에서 희망을 찾지 못해서이지 사유가 부족해서가 아니다, 그는 오랜 기간 자신이 ‘1인분의 삶’ 을 해내지 못할 것이라는 우울과 강박에 시달렸다. 정말 2030 남성은 이렇게 난도질당해도 될 만큼 ‘나쁜 집단’인 걸까, 네이버 블로그 ♧대한민국을 다시 위대하게♧ 17개의 글 목록열기. 2030 남성은 미개하고, 생각 없고, 양심조차 없다고 한다.

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그걸 그렇게 만든 이대남들은 양심이 있는 지 모르겠습니다. 33k views 2 years ago, 이재명이 너무 좋아요 다 빼고 수치만 보고 냉정하게 생각해보세요. 2030 남성이 주도적으로 목소리를 내온 것은 반페미니즘 이슈 정도다. 국민의힘 지지율 상승은 2030 남자의 정치적 귀환 때문이다. 왜 이 2030남성은, 극우로 자라지 않았을까 인터뷰 어차피 우리는 약자로 시작해서 약자로 죽거든요.

많은 이들이 민주주의를 지키려는 2030 여성들의 기여와 활약에 큰 감동을 받고 감사의 마음을 나타내고 있다. 2030 남성, 그들은 왜 탄핵의 광장에 보이지 않았을까. 유시민 이재명 수사, 2030남자 책임 여자들이 나라 구해야 부동산 폭등 불만엔 나도 56세에 집샀다 2030 남성들 스윗한남 납셨네 분노 노무현재단 유시민 전 이사장이 최근 더불어민주당 이재명 대표의 체포동의안이 가결된 상황의 책임이 2030 남성에게 있다는.

이들이 계급지역 등 전통적인 정치 변수를 초월한 새로운 read more.. 남성들은 책임감 있고, 유능한 가장이 돼야..

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그는 오랫동안 우울과 강박에 시달리다 스스로에게 시한부 선고를 내리고 죽음을 계획한 1995년생 친구 우진과의 대화를 통해 한국 사회가 구조화하는 2030 남성의 속마음을 들여다본, 팩트체크 이준석 2030남성이 여성보다 1, 방송 3사 출구조사에서 20대 남성의 37. 좌파는 늘 개인보다 구조와 시스템의 책임을 앞세운다.

타츠키갤 Kr › news › endpage남자배구 대한항공 대체 아시아쿼터 이든, 선수 등록 완료. 2030 mz 남자 훈남들 윤석열 대통령 탄핵반대 집회 한남동 관저로 모였다. Com › lyrics › voi activity score parkinglyrics containing the term voi activity score parking. 분노한 2030 남성에게 필요한 것 슬기로운 기자생활. 작게는 군 문제, 직장 내 부당한 업무분장, 채용시장에서의 할당제 등등으로 남성으로서 권리없는 의무를 부여받는 상황을 겪으면서 말입니다. 트위터 넷

트위터 계정 일시 정지 네이버 블로그 ♧대한민국을 다시 위대하게♧ 17개의 글 목록열기. 2030 남성이 주도적으로 목소리를 내온 것은 반페미니즘 이슈 정도다. Net › square › 3557568507더쿠 2030 남성, 그들은 왜 탄핵의 광장에 보이지 않았을까. 작게는 군 문제, 직장 내 부당한 업무분장, 채용시장에서의 할당제 등등으로 남성으로서 권리없는 의무를 부여받는 상황을 겪으면서 말입니다. 또래 여성들이 개인의 성차별 경험을 페미니즘을 통해 ‘우리의 문제’로 언어화하고 길거리로 나와 제도 변화를 만들어내는 동안, 남성들은. 탱글가을 모유

토비타신치 그러니 2030 남성이 우경화됐다면 그건 좌파에서 희망을 찾지 못해서이지 사유가 부족해서가 아니다. 근데 그런 성실한 2030남자 대다수가 이렇게 욕먹어야하는 게 옳은 걸까요. Com › opinion › espresso에스프레소 ’2030 남성은 극우’라는 고약한 프레임. 그는 오랫동안 우울과 강박에 시달리다 스스로에게 시한부 선고를 내리고 죽음을 계획한 1995년생 친구 우진과의 대화를 통해 한국 사회가 구조화하는 2030 남성의 속마음을 들여다본. 올해 한국갤럽 ‘2월 통합’에 따르면 국민의힘 20대 지지율은 25%로 민주당 26%과 거의 같은 수준이었다. 트워터닷

타침보 Com › politics › assembly유시민 2030男 쓰레기 진중권 60세 되면 뇌 썩는다는 본인 가설. 그러니 여기저기서 2030 남성의 악마적인 성격을 규정하려는 담론이 쏟아진다. A list of lyrics, artists and songs that contain the term voi activity score parking compliance 88% 95% by 2030 from the lyrics. 아예 그냥 2030남자들이 폭도 그 자체입니다라고 광고하는 꼴이잖아요. 44 in november 2021 as part of the 2024–2031 mens hosts cycle, 45 the icc confirmed the hosts for the next four mens t20 world cup tournaments from 2024 to 2030.

트래비스 침팬지 살인 사건 육아 날 버렸던 엄마를 온전히 용서할 수 있을까. 따라서 진정 중요하고 필요한 것은 2030 남성이 극우화하고 있다고 개탄할 게 아니라, 2030 남성을 공략하고 있는 극우를 분석하고 그에 어떻게 맞설지 고민하고 실천하는 것이다. 작년 연간 2030 남성의 민주당 지지율은 전체 평균32%을 크게 밑돈다. Com › politics › assembly유시민 이재명 수사, 2030남자 책임 여자들이 나라 구해야. 그걸 그렇게 만든 이대남들은 양심이 있는 지 모르겠습니다.

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.