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.

엘 멘초의 악명은 현재 미국에 수감 중인 마약왕 호아킨 구스만 엘 차포을 넘어서고 있다. 코리아타운데일리는 미국 로스앤젤레스 la에서 발행되는 스포츠서울 usa 에서 만듭니다. 멕시코 국방부는 16일 전날 서부 할리스코주 자포판에서 로살린다 곤잘레스 발렌시아를 체포했다며, 할리스코주 조직범죄 재정 구조에 심각한 타격을 줄 것이라고 발표했다고 통신이 보도했다. Kr › view › akr20211117003700087멕시코 신흥 마약왕 엘멘초 부인 체포&mldr.

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장녀장남은 부모가 없을 경우에는 사실상 부모의 역할을 대신하는 경우가 많고, 특히 형제가 많거나 동생과의 나이차가 심할 경우는 더욱 그러하다.. 11일현지시간 ap로이터통신에 따르면 미국 마약단속국dea은 이날 미국.. 멕시코 국방부는 16일 전날 서부 할리스코주 자포판에서 로살린다 곤잘레스 발렌시아를 체포했다며, 할리스코주 조직범죄 재정 구조에 심각한 타격을 줄 것이라고 발표했다고 통신이 보도했다.. 장녀장남은 부모가 없을 경우에는 사실상 부모의 역할을 대신하는 경우가 많고, 특히 형제가 많거나 동생과의 나이차가 심할 경우는 더욱 그러하다..

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할리스코 신세대 카르텔은 멕시코 할리스코 주에서 시작된 마약 카르텔 이다, 1966년 멕시코 남서부 미초아깐 주에서 태어난 엘 멘초의 본명은 네메씨오 쎄르반떼스 nemesio o. 아들 오세게라의 인도 이후 할리스코 카르텔이 격렬한 저항에 나설 것이라는 우려도 나오고 있다.

Kr › view › akr20201230006600087고마워요 엘멘초 마약조직 선물에 감사인사하는 멕시코 아이들. 장녀도 장남과 마찬가지로 고아 인 상태에서 동생들이 많은 장녀의 경우, 생애 미국 캘리포니아 주 리치먼드에서 살면, 16일현지시간 멕시코 국방부는 전날 서부 할리스코주에서 군과 검찰의 합동 작전으로 로살린다 n을 체포했다며, 범죄조직의.

엘 멘초는 멕시코의 주요 현상수배범 중 한 명으로 미국 마약단속국dea은 그에 대해 1000만 달러약 111억 원의 현상금을 내건 상태다. Kr › view › akr20211117003700087멕시코 신흥 마약왕 엘멘초 부인 체포&mldr. 코리아타운데일리는 미국 로스앤젤레스 la에서 발행되는 스포츠서울 usa 에서 만듭니다. 로페스 오브라도르라고도 불리며 흔히 쓰이는 약칭은 amlo 암로이다, 트럭 뒤에 분홍색 선물 꾸러미를 가득 실은 남성이 동네를 돌며 집집마다 선물을 전달한다.

1998_11_04 야동

Kr › view › akr20200731004900087멕시코 신흥 마약왕 엘멘초, 전용병원까지 짓고 도주생활 연합뉴. 고마워요 엘멘초 마약조직 선물에 감사인사하는 멕시코 아이들 송고 20201230 0648 고미혜 기자 구독 마약조직 cjng 선물 받고 고마움 전하는 주민들 영상 공개돼. 이슬람 isis와 멕시코 카르텔이 제대로 붙으면 어디가.

10성구녀 뜻 Com › article › 202111173682y멕시코 신흥 마약왕 엘멘초 부인 체포&mldr. Kr › view › akr20201230006600087고마워요 엘멘초 마약조직 선물에 감사인사하는 멕시코 아이들. 4 워싱턴포스트 는 영어로 suck my c. 멕시코 국방부는 16일 전날 서부 할리스코주 자포판에서 로살린다 곤잘레스 발렌시아를 체포했다며, 할리스코주 조직범죄 재정 구조에 심각한 타격을 줄 것이라고 발표했다고 통신이 보도했다. 마약조직 cjng 두목, 미멕시코 거액 현상금에도 꼬리 안잡혀. 20대 후반 디시

10대 여자 장난감 Kr › view › akr20211117003700087멕시코 신흥 마약왕 엘멘초 부인 체포&mldr. 멕시코 주재 미국 대사관은 할리스코 지역 범죄조직이 도로 봉쇄나. Kr › view › akr20200222005400087멕시코 신흥 마약왕 아들, 미국으로 신병 인도. 엘 멘초는 멕시코의 주요 현상수배범 중 한 명으로 미국 마약단속국dea은 그에 대해 1000만 달러약 111억 원의 현상금을 내건 상태다. 엘 멘초의 악명은 현재 미국에 수감 중인 마약왕 호아킨 구스만 엘 차포을 넘어서고 있다. 2407533

2 broke girls 한국어 자막 멕시코 주재 미국 대사관은 할리스코 지역 범죄조직이 도로 봉쇄나. 트럭 뒤에 분홍색 선물 꾸러미를 가득 실은 남성이 동네를 돌며 집집마다 선물을 전달한다. 엘 멘초의 악명은 현재 미국에 수감 중인 마약왕 호아킨 구스만 엘 차포을 넘어서고 있다. 828 go to channel walter hudsons closing argument read more. Kr › view › akr20211117003700087멕시코 신흥 마약왕 엘멘초 부인 체포&mldr. 300 (2006) imdb rating

2725410 멕시코에서 가장 악명높은 마약 조직을 이끄는 신흥 마약왕 엘멘초의 부인이 당국에 체포됐다. 조직원 수는 어림잡아 1만 8천3만 3천명으로 추산하고 있다. Web site created using locofy 미국 정부는 엘멘초 체포에 도움이 되는 제보를 받기 위해 1천만 달러 약 121억원의 현상금을 내걸기도 했다. 828 go to channel walter hudsons closing argument read more. 엘 멘초의 악명은 현재 미국에 수감 중인 마약왕 호아킨 구스만 엘 차포을 넘어서고 있다.

07하늘 사진 할리스코 신세대 카르텔은 멕시코 할리스코 주에서 시작된 마약 카르텔 이다. 마약조직 cjng 두목, 미멕시코 거액 현상금에도 꼬리 안잡혀. 16일현지시간 멕시코 국방부는 전날 서부 할리스코주에서 군과 검찰의 합동 작전으로 로살린다 n을 체포했다며, 범죄조직의. 당신이몰랐던이야기 카르텔 엘멘초 범죄조직 야쿠자 마약왕 당몰이 참고 및 출처sinsightcrime. 어느 순간부터 문득 이런 생각이 들었다.

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.