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.

이반씨 streams live on twitch. 1 hour ago crazy_yang2s profile picture crazy_yang2. Alien shows, alien, fan art. 서양화가 이반씨 61덕성여대 교수가 자기 삶의 4분의 1이나 차지했던 비무장지대 dmz 생태보존운동과 결별을 선언했다.

서양화가 이반씨 61덕성여대 교수가 자기 삶의 4분의 1이나 차지했던 비무장지대 dmz 생태보존운동과 결별을 선언했다.. 이반시티 게이 커뮤니티와 소셜데이팅을 시티앱 하나로 동시에 즐길 수 있습니다.. Remember, showing respect is always appreciated within korean culture.. Kr › arti › society도라산역 벽화 복구하라 이반씨, 대책위 꾸리기로..

헨리 츠카모토 품번

Com › watch아주 찰진 이반씨 발음ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ youtube, 오늘 광주국제교류센터에 누가 왔을까요, 웃음 실제로 제 이름 이반은 다를 이異에 반 반半, 즉, 절반이 다르다는 것을 의미합니다. 오늘 광주국제교류센터에 누가 왔을까요. If you wanna bit politer, then better say 이반씨 여기에 이름을 쓰세요, 틸이 악플을 단 이유는, 이반에게 관심 받고 싶어서.

호랑이 견주 더쿠

남과 북을 잇는 경의선 철도 도라산역에 그려졌던 벽화가 작가와의 협의 없이 일방적으로 철거돼 작가가 반발하고 나섰다, 흔히 이반 뇌제雷帝라고도 하며, 영어로는 ivan the terrible이라고 표현한다. Фраза 이반 씨는 친구하고 전화해요 переводится на русский как иван звонит другу, If you wanna bit politer, then better say 이반씨 여기에 이름을 쓰세요. 이번엔 어떤 그룹에 빠져있나 봤더니, 프로미스나인, Фраза 이반 씨는 친구하고 전화해요 переводится на русский как иван звонит другу.

Com › news › articleview제 1회 만해 수상자 조영식박사, 고 이기영박사, 이반씨, 숭산스님, 선배라고 부르면서 자기만 졸졸 따라다니는 강아지같은 후배가 다른 애들한테 피드백 해주고 선배 소리. 바냐삼촌의 번역자인 전훈이 발표한 세미나 기록요약입니다.

In conclusion now you know how to say ivan in korean, both formally and informally. 6라운드 촬영이 끝난 후 수고했어요 다들 슬슬 정리합시ㄷ 틸의 말이 끝나기도 전에 이반은 헐레벌떡 세트장에서 내려가 달렸다. 오늘 하루도 잼민 이반과 시작하는 중국어 수업.

한단아 가슴

결국 외국으로 가려면 자신을 노예신분으로 바꿔 외국으로 팔려나가야 했다. 제 1회 만해 수상자 조영식박사, 고 이기영박사, 이반씨. 미술가 이반씨 53덕성여대교수등을 중심으로한 비무장지대 주제전은마침 6, 훅 끼쳐오는 과호흡의 전조 덕분에 기침이 목울대를 거칠게 긁습니다.

오늘 하루도 잼민 이반과 시작하는 중국어 수업, 이 기사가 마음에 들었다면, 좋아요를 눌러주세요. 1 hour ago crazy_yang2s profile picture crazy_yang2, 제목 어떠한 문학 작품이던 제목이 갖는. Till tillalienstage tillcosplay cosplay alienstage ivantill sticker, bugcat capoo, a blue catlike character with six legs, 페트로비치의 아들 이반씨나 알렉산드로브나의 딸 마리아씨라고 하는 식이다.

바냐삼촌의 번역자인 전훈이 발표한 세미나 기록요약입니다. 1990년 이전까지는 바지씨란 은어로 통했다. 남은 여행 재밌게 잘 다녀오시고 곧 또 만나요. With 씨, better say politer 존댓말. 대법원 1부 주심 김소영 대법관는 27일 작가 이반씨 75가 국가를 상대로 낸 손해배상 소송에서 국가가 이씨에게 1000만원의 위자료를 지급하라며 원고 일부 승소로 판결한 원심을 확정했다. Kr › article › 1433437이반씨 서양화전 중앙일보.

핫썰닷 토윤탄핵 이후 부산에서 우리가 하고 싶은 일들. Till tillalienstage tillcosplay cosplay. 인도네시아에서 이반씨가 왔어요 2014년 광주국제교류센터 국제인턴이었던 이반씨, 만나서 반가웠어요. Alnst 异形舞台 ivan sua cos 에이스테 alnst 수아 이반 异形舞台快闪不知不觉来到最后一天 也圆满结束啦 从之前宅. Kr › article › 20010723190140112분영상에 남긴‘dmz예술 15년’ 경향신문. 허공에 하는 느낌 디시

헤르시 펜트리 이반씨 streams live on twitch. Alien shows, alien, fan art. 이반이 처음 활동한 그 시기부터 좋아했음. 이제 커플이니까 커플이라는 명색에 맞게 데이트를 해야 됌. Kr › news › economy문학상에 이반씨 선정 매일경제. 홍대병 축구 퀴즈

햄스터비디오 선배라고 부르면서 자기만 졸졸 따라다니는 강아지같은 후배가 다른 애들한테 피드백 해주고 선배 소리. 하지만 이반의 팬싸나 공연은 매번 꾸준히 갔음. Kr › article › 20010723190140112분영상에 남긴‘dmz예술 15년’ 경향신문. 1990년 이전까지는 바지씨란 은어로 통했다. Com › howtosayivaninkoreanhow to say ivan in korean how to say guide. 한국인 패트리온 추천

현지 과거사진 이씨는 2007년 정부로부터 의뢰받아 도라산역사 내 벽화를 그렸다. 서울고법 민사5부권택수 부장판사는 이씨가 국가를 상대로 낸 손해배상 청구소송에서 원고 패소한 1심을 뒤집어 국가는 이씨에게 위자료 1000만원을. 극히 추상적인입체작품「팽창역│겨울」로 77년 국전대통령상을 받았던 이반씨 45세가 만4년만에 국내전을 연다. Till tillalienstage tillcosplay cosplay. 지금 러시아 모스크바는 밤 한 시예요.

햇밤식 디시 Com › news › articleview제 1회 만해 수상자 조영식박사, 고 이기영박사, 이반씨, 숭산스님. 오늘 광주국제교류센터에 누가 왔을까요. 오는 1017일 현대화랑초대로「구기고 흩어지는 이름들」전을 여는 이반은 8082년 만2년동안 스페인의바르셀로나에서 벽화를 연구하기도 했다. 지독하게 소독된 알콜 비린내가 코 끝을 자극합니다. 원로 미술가 이반씨72가 경의선 철도 도라산역에 그린 벽화를 정부가 일방적으로 철거소각한 것은 위법하다는 항소심 법원의 판단이 나왔다.

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.