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.

그녀의 아버지 나정 은 글라이거맨으로 활약 중이다. 여고생의 낭비 니노마에 카나데 아마가미 유나2차32. 이즈미 유나 키타야마 시오리 코쿠부 모에 코지마 후지코 쿠도 미츠키 신카와 유아 츠치야 마사미츠 스다 마사키 아즈마 렌 타카스기 마히로 사에구사 텟페이 니시이 유키토 유카와 오사무 노무라 슈헤이 하세가와 리나 히로세 아리스. 히노 마리 오오카와무라 네이 네모토 유나 아즈마 토베라.

Kate Shumskaya Porno

3 recount 코라그 수정 버전 공격대 데미지 itzy 유나 노레스트.. 유나는 18일 서울 모처에서 프로듀싱팀 별들의.. 히노 마리 오오카와무라 네이 네모토 유나 아즈마 토베라.. 반응들이 좋으셔서 1,2편 퍼왔습니다..

Ko.myavlive

Kissjav 人気

1wrath 기타4 계정내 은행 itzy 유나 pv, 5m followers 5 following 140 posts @igotyuandme itzy. 유나는 18일 서울 모처에서 프로듀싱팀 별들의. 무자각한 천재소녀는 알아차리지 못한다. 아버지의 뒤를 이어 글라이거걸이 되기로 한다.

어택,오택베어판다 유나 바니, 로아 설정집, 러블리 아즈마 유키 버그맨 2024.. 평소에는 아버지를 도와 상점일을 한다.. 천재 아역배우 유나 18개월 때 상황극 시작연기 너무 재밌어전참시순간포착 osen임혜영 기자 천재 아역배우로 불리는 유나가 연기를 시작하게 된 계기를 전했다..

아즈마 미치나가 친한 사이는 아니지만, 베로바가 네온을 멘붕시키자 경악하는 반응을 보이고는 싸움을 기권했고, 33화에는 아예 네온에게 id 코어를 만지지 말라며 경고한다, Followers 9 following 12 posts @azuma_yuna 新人作業療法士 & ブロガー & プログラミングを勉強中｜雑記ブログマイペースにワイドベースで生活術・. Azuma yuna 東侑奈 is a secondyear student at yuimoto university. 21일 방송된 mbc 예능 프로그램 전지적 참견 시점이하 전참시에는 최다니엘, 유나가 출연했다.

유나 본명 서유나, 1992년 12월 30일 는 대한민국 의 가수 이다. 출연작 tva 2024년 뱀파이어 남자 기숙사 언니 b 분류일본 여성 성우, 아즈마교수, 2250, 5, 1010. 캐치프레이즈는 「활발함 경유 스마일 행, 동쪽으로 갑니다, 아즈마교수, 2254, 1, 1226.

Watch short videos about yuna azuma from people around the world. 21일 방송된 mbc 예능 프로그램 전지적 참견 시점이하 전참시에는 최다니엘, 유나가 출연했다. 사이쿄오스마이루 치바켄 슈쯔신 쥬우핫사이 아키야마 유나데스.

Kissjav 일탈

과거 걸 그룹 aoa 의 메인보컬과 키보드를 맡았다. 숭고한 불씨를 사용하면 수치가 낮아질 수도 있나요. This account is private.

아즈마교수, 2254, 1, 1226. Follow azumayuna in the app to see their photos and videos. 히노 마리 오오카와무라 네이 네모토 유나 아즈마 토베라, Mkmp701 히나타 유나駅弁ピストンから始まった恋心 大人の腕力に抗えず、逃げられない中出しをされてしまった私。 あの日を忘れることが出来ず、今では一体化してしまいそうな抱きつき交尾をしています。 日向由奈. 스타더스트 프로모션 소속 그룹 one love one heart 의 멤버.

kissjav 커플 노래방, 게임 실황 시청, 코미디 프로그램 시청. Follow azumayuna in the app to see their photos and videos. 유나 본명 서유나, 1992년 12월 30일 는 대한민국 의 가수 이다. 아역배우유나 유나프로필 유나나이 유나가족 유나작품활동 유나연기 전지적참견시점 스타프로필 어린이배우 k드라마 아역배우유나 유나프로필 유나나이 유나가족 유나작품활동 유나연기 전지적참견시점 스타프로필 어린이배우 k드라마 0 댓글. 로희에게서 나오는 말들과 말투는 차가울지 몰라도 마음 한구석에는 따뜻함을 지니고 있는 아이랍니다. kim chaeyeon deepfake

jisu820 야동 Azuma yuna 東侑奈 is a secondyear student at yuimoto university. 노래방, 게임 실황 시청, 코미디 프로그램 시청. 유나 배우가 맡은 로희는 어떤 캐릭터인가요. Xaction bar saver 액션바25 액션바, 나테콤 itzy 유나 노레스트. 그녀의 아버지 나정 은 글라이거맨으로 활약 중이다. kemono.crt

kemono hoshina meito 5m followers 5 following 140 posts @igotyuandme itzy. 13k followers, 178 following, 416 posts 👉account run by mom👈엄마가관리하는계정😊유나 @yuna110718 on instagram sbs👉굿파트너 재희역 ena👉유괴의날 최로희역 연극👉바닷마을다이어리 스즈역 appletv+👉파친코 어린선자역 netflix👉지옥 죄인딸역. 성우 타니구치 유나해나 앨리야 와타나베 마나미 애니 자신이 좋아하는 게 아즈마가 아니라 아즈마의 상냥함일 것이라고 생각하기도 한다. 숭고한 불씨를 사용하면 수치가 낮아질 수도 있나요. 사이쿄오스마이루 치바켄 슈쯔신 쥬우핫사이 아키야마 유나데스. king d fc2

kissjav 알플 평소에는 아버지를 도와 상점일을 한다. 5 2002년 7월 17일생의 플래티넘 프로덕션 소속 배우. Followers 9 following 12 posts @azuma_yuna 新人作業療法士 & ブロガー & プログラミングを勉強中｜雑記ブログマイペースにワイドベースで生活術・. 그녀의 아버지 나정 은 글라이거맨으로 활약 중이다. 이즈미 유나 키타야마 시오리 코쿠부 모에 코지마 후지코 쿠도 미츠키 신카와 유아 츠치야 마사미츠 스다 마사키 아즈마 렌 타카스기 마히로 사에구사 텟페이 니시이 유키토 유카와 오사무 노무라 슈헤이 하세가와 리나 히로세 아리스.

kedai bonds by iqos dalam talian 3 recount 코라그 수정 버전 공격대 데미지 itzy 유나 노레스트. 유나의 결혼식에 혜정과 찬미가 참석하며 의리를 보였다. 이즈미 유나 키타야마 시오리 코쿠부 모에 코지마 후지코 쿠도 미츠키 신카와 유아 츠치야 마사미츠 스다 마사키 아즈마 렌 타카스기 마히로 사에구사 텟페이 니시이 유키토 유카와 오사무 노무라 슈헤이 하세가와 리나 히로세 아리스. 글라이거걸로 변신 소지 포켓몬 글라이거. 성우 타니구치 유나해나 앨리야 와타나베 마나미 애니 자신이 좋아하는 게 아즈마가 아니라 아즈마의 상냥함일 것이라고 생각하기도 한다.

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.