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.

마사지고는 건전마사지 업체를 소개하는 중개업체이며 불법적인 업체와는 제휴를 하지 않습니다. 20대부터 30대의 여성들이 철저한 바디 마사지를. 해외에서 이미 유명한 한국 k뷰티 제품, 델라본 콜라겐 크림. 일본 여행 가서도 마사지 받고 싶은 마음이 없었던 건 아닌데, 바로 그 마음을 꾹꾹 눌러주는 가격표들이 있었으니 30분에 4,290엔 90분에 10,890엔 보통 받는 90분을 받으려면 거의 10만 원에 가까운 돈을 지불해야 되는 그래서 그런지 시간이 꽤나 세분되어 있었다.

Xhamster Korean Wife

먼저 전신에 정성스럽게 오일을 바르고, 고객의 희망에 따라 마사지 강도와 부위를 조절해 드립니다.. 외국인 ok교토에서 꼭 시도해봐야 할 추천 데리헬 5곳.. 마사지 업소 직원이 마사지 전에 옷을 벗도록 요청하는 것이 일반적입니다.. 베트남 20살 마른 글래머 미녀의 부드러운 베트남 로컬 마사지..

X 국적 더쿠

미토이바라키の맛사지（에스테）「japan girls spot」. 라는 콘셉트로 추리에 힐링되는 특별한 시간을 보내보자. Com › bbs › board베트남 밤문화 끝판왕 총정리 밤문화 후기 하노이 꼭 가봐야. 전화연결 카톡연결 텔레연결 구글위치고객 편의를 최우선으로 생각하는 디살롱입니다. 확실한 마인드와 서비스로 모십니다 ️텔레그램 출근부 확인 운영시간 낮 12시 밤 12시입장 시간 기준 운영방식 텔레그램 초이스 방식, 방석집만 현장 실물 초이스 가능 이용코스.

Y Cancan

마사지고는 건전마사지 업체를 소개하는 중개업체이며 불법적인 업체와는 제휴를 하지 않습니다. Com › bbs › board하노이 미딩 d salon 떡 마사지 가격코스예약 총정리. 베트남 20살 마른 글래머 미녀의 부드러운 베트남 로컬 마사지 여행자의 피로를 부드러운손길로 풀어준다. 해외에서 이미 유명한 한국 k뷰티 제품, 델라본 콜라겐 크림. 높은 수준의 치유를 제공하는 가게뿐이므로, 꼭, 넘치는 성욕으로 패션헬스 서비스 업소 플레이에 몰두하다 보면 격렬하게 흐트러진다.

yako. 베트남 20살 마른 글래머 미녀의 부드러운 베트남 로컬 마사지 여행자의 피로를 부드러운손길로 풀어준다. 즐겨찾기 새글 01월 30일 금 로그인 회원가입 정보찾기 faq 11문의 접속자 9 문마사지 하노이 풍선바 하노이 가라오케 하노이 마사지 하노이 셔츠룸 하노이 바 호치민 밤문화 밤문화 후기. Com › bbs › board베트남 밤문화 끝판왕 총정리 밤문화 후기 하노이 꼭 가봐야. 패션헬스 서비스 업소 남편만으로는 부족해 한낮에도 비밀스러운 정사를 즐기는 유부녀 & 성인 여성들의 휴식처. Com › bbs › board베트남 밤문화 끝판왕 총정리 밤문화 후기 하노이 꼭 가봐야. xvideos red free

yoo_nabiii Com › bbs › board베트남 밤문화 끝판왕 총정리 밤문화 후기 하노이 꼭 가봐야. Com › bbs › board하노이 미딩 황제 때밀이 스파 코스가격예약 총정리 하노이 마. 일본 여행 가서도 마사지 받고 싶은 마음이 없었던 건 아닌데, 바로 그 마음을 꾹꾹 눌러주는 가격표들이 있었으니 30분에 4,290엔 90분에 10,890엔 보통 받는 90분을 받으려면 거의 10만 원에 가까운 돈을 지불해야 되는 그래서 그런지 시간이 꽤나 세분되어 있었다. Lewd masseuse esthetic은 90분에 ¥40,000으로 가격이 책정된 에로틱 마사지 샵입니다 외국인 가격. 미토베트남 남부 여행중 미토city 외곽. youtube to mp3 cloudconvert

ycan av 가게와 소녀가 얼마나 언어 능력이 있는지, 언어 레벨을 표기했습니다. 이 기사에서는 미야기에서 에로틱 마사지를 체험 할 수있는 추천 풍속점을 엄선하여 6 점포 소개합니다. Lewd masseuse esthetic은 90분에 ¥40,000으로 가격이 책정된 에로틱 마사지 샵입니다 외국인 가격. 시내중심쪽에 위치해있고 건물 큰걸 하나를 쓰고있는데 입구에 들어서면 초록색 큰 낡은 간판에 quoc te라고 쓰여져있다. 흡연을 원하는 투숙객의 경우 지정된 공간을 이용하실 수 있습니다. x 보추

yakoasia 디시 마사지고는 건전마사지 업체를 소개하는 중개업체이며 불법적인 업체와는 제휴를 하지 않습니다. 마사지 업소 직원이 마사지 전에 옷을 벗도록 요청하는 것이 일반적입니다. 여행, 비즈니스 등으로 교토시을 방문하신 외국인 관광객이 안심하고 이용하실 수 있는 일본의 출장에스테틱퇴폐마사지 콜걸을 소개합니다. 시내중심쪽에 위치해있고 건물 큰걸 하나를 쓰고있는데 입구에 들어서면 초록색 큰 낡은 간판에 quoc te라고 쓰여져있다. 해외에서 이미 유명한 한국 k뷰티 제품, 델라본 콜라겐 크림.

yoon bo mi nude 하나투어부산출발 베트남항공 출발확정 호치민미토. 즐겨찾기 새글 01월 30일 금 로그인 회원가입 정보찾기 faq 11문의 접속자 9 문마사지 하노이 풍선바 하노이 가라오케 하노이 마사지 하노이 셔츠룸 하노이 바 호치민 밤문화 밤문화 후기. 언어 레벨 표시로, 가게 스탭이나 소녀와의 교환도 부드럽게. 외국인 응대가 가능한 유흥업소 정보를 안내합니다. 특히 허리와 등 마사지는 근육이 많고 피로가 쌓이기 쉬운 부위입니다.

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.