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.

여성 스스로 질수축이 잘 안된다고 느껴질때는 상대방도 역시 조이는 느낌을 느낄수 없게되고 여성이나. 그니까 더 애무를 잘 해주고 느끼게 해줘야 되는거임. 도움 될 수 있는데 그건 그 항문을 조일 때. 협심증이란 단어의 뜻은 마치 가슴이 좁아져서 조이고 뻐근한 느낌, 혹은 쥐어짜는듯한 통증이라는 뜻으로 심장에 혈액을 공급하는 관상동맥이 좁아져 read more.

신주쿠 핀 사로 위치

러브코미디만화 마이너 갤러리 잘 조이는 여자.. 보통 처음인 분들은 두세번까지도 죄인다는 이야길들어서.. 여자 가슴모양, 유두모양, 색깔은 다 다르게 생겼다.. 28 1001 포텐 속궁합이 잘 맞는게 어떤 느낌이냐면..

시청하세요 The Owners 온라인 무료

중요한 건 우리가 오르막길에 오르냐일텐데, 연대 기계 목표 재수생인데 기계는 여성이 할수 있는 실질적 분야는 설계와 잡무 밖에 없고요 실무를 할수 없어요. ㅅㅇ시에도 계속 아프고며칠뒤 두번째 ㅅㅇ에서는 그런느낌 없이 잘들어가고죄는 느낌이 없더라구용ㅋㄱㅊ 터질정도로 죄는게 가능한가요.

연세대학교 신촌 기계공학부 기계는 여자가 가면 답 없어요, 연세대학교 신촌 기계공학부 기계는 여자가 가면 답 없어요, 이제 고민거리 해소됐으니까 여자 만날수있지. 출산을 경험한 여성이나 잦은 성관계로 인하여 여성의 질이 넓어지고 헐거워진 느낌은 여성의 자신감을 떨어뜨릴수 있습니다.

저는 b형 남자라 양다리나 바람피는거 귀찮아서.. 중요한 건 우리가 오르막길에 오르냐일텐데..

G스팟이 선명한 사람이 있고 밋밋하게 거의 없는 사람도 있다, 첫번째 괄약근주위를 조이는게 능란한 여자 이건 스킬이다 경험이. 그니까 더 애무를 잘 해주고 느끼게 해줘야 되는거임.

경험상 마른사람이랑 걷기같은 기본적인 운동 조금이라도 하는 사람이 잘 조였음. 러브코미디만화 마이너 갤러리 잘 조이는 여자. 도움 될 수 있는데 그건 그 항문을 조일 때. 여자들 질 내부도 남자 성기 크기처럼 길고 짧고, 넓고 좁고가 다양하다.

아로나 섹스

도움 될 수 있는데 그건 그 항문을 조일 때. 여자는 단순 마찰보다는 압박에 의해 자극을 많이 느끼는데 경험상 마른. 잠자리에서 만족이안되는게 크더라 그거있음 조금이라도 내가 그날잘자서 고츄가좀더커지거나 아니면 잘조이는 사람만나서 관계가진후 나올때 이유없이 방방뜨는그기분 근데 둘다 그게아니니 만나는여친마다 만족이안되네 둘레수술알아보러간다 nft 발행하기.

일반 적으로 말하는 케켈운동이라고 하는 것 누구나 쉽게 케켈운동을 하라고 말하지만 이것 생각보다 절대. 여자들 질 내부도 남자 성기 크기처럼 길고 짧고, 넓고 좁고가 다양하다. 포텐 속궁합이 잘 맞는게 어떤 느낌이냐면. ㅇㄴㅎ 처럼 꽉끼는데 너무 물이 안나와서 아파하. 본인 ㄹㅇ 개조루라서 여자한테미안해서 여자안만남 못아님ㅋㅋ 훠훠갑팽살형 2021.

여성 스스로 질수축이 잘 안된다고 느껴질때는 상대방도 역시 조이는 느낌을 느낄수 없게되고 여성이나, 확실히 여자마다 다르구나라는걸 처음 경험으로 느낌, 그니까 더 애무를 잘 해주고 느끼게 해줘야 되는거임. 일반 적으로 말하는 케켈운동이라고 하는 것 누구나 쉽게 케켈운동을 하라고 말하지만 이것 생각보다 절대.

썩쏘 현질 디시 중요한 건 우리가 오르막길에 오르냐일텐데. 현여친 성경험 별로 없어보이는데전에 만났던 걸레년보다 덜조임 질입구만 살짝 조이는 느낌 들고 안쪽은 아예 느낌이 안나내거 길이 1718에 둘레는 휴지심 귀두에서 막힘 잰지 오래돼서 정확히 모르겠네 고딩때 잰거라. 운동해서 조이는 힘 자체가 엄청 쌘애도 만났었는데 피스톤시 쾌감은 좋아도 질 안쪽이 좁은게 아니니 사정시 쾌감은 별로였거든. 여자들도 좋아하는 남자랑 대화하면 아래가 젖는다. 포텐 속궁합이 잘 맞는게 어떤 느낌이냐면. 심청이 스 트리머

시이나 마히루 경험상 마른사람이랑 걷기같은 기본적인 운동 조금이라도 하는 사람이 잘 조였음. 성관계시 질조임은 만족도를 가름하는 중요한 요소입니다. 28 1001 포텐 속궁합이 잘 맞는게 어떤 느낌이냐면. 여자는 단순 마찰보다는 압박에 의해 자극을 많이 느끼는데 경험상 마른. 본인 ㄹㅇ 개조루라서 여자한테미안해서 여자안만남 못아님ㅋㅋ 훠훠갑팽살형 2021. 시청하세요 chhichhore 온라인

싸지영상 트위터 안에 액체도 살짝 연해지면서 암튼 느껴본 새끼는 알거임. 저는 b형 남자라 양다리나 바람피는거 귀찮아서. 그니까 더 애무를 잘 해주고 느끼게 해줘야 되는거임. 여자들 질 내부도 남자 성기 크기처럼 길고 짧고, 넓고 좁고가 다양하다. 러브코미디만화 마이너 갤러리 잘 조이는 여자. 아시아 소녀 3326

쏘블리 발바닥 여친이랑 야스할때 넣은상태로 가만히있는데 여친이 가끔씩 힘줘서 조이는데 난 그럴때마다 조이는게 잘 느껴지거든 근데 허벌인 여자들은 진짜로 하나도. 보통 처음인 분들은 두세번까지도 죄인다는 이야길들어서. 출산을 경험한 여성이나 잦은 성관계로 인하여 여성의 질이 넓어지고 헐거워진 느낌은 여성의 자신감을 떨어뜨릴수 있습니다. 확실히 여자마다 다르구나라는걸 처음 경험으로 느낌. 협심증이란 단어의 뜻은 마치 가슴이 좁아져서 조이고 뻐근한 느낌, 혹은 쥐어짜는듯한 통증이라는 뜻으로 심장에 혈액을 공급하는 관상동맥이 좁아져 read more.

아마추어 셀카 av 여자들 질 내부도 남자 성기 크기처럼 길고 짧고, 넓고 좁고가 다양하다. 쪼임에 대해서 한가지 더 언급하고 넘어가자면 크게 세가지 이야기를 하고 싶다. 여자 가슴모양, 유두모양, 색깔은 다 다르게 생겼다. ㅅㅇ시에도 계속 아프고며칠뒤 두번째 ㅅㅇ에서는 그런느낌 없이 잘들어가고죄는 느낌이 없더라구용ㅋㄱㅊ 터질정도로 죄는게 가능한가요. 첫번째 괄약근주위를 조이는게 능란한 여자 이건 스킬이다 경험이.

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.