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.

브로드웨이 공연이 끝난 뒤 니켈로디언 방영용으로 프로샷이 촬영되었다. 그곳에서 우연히 강도를 잡고, 그에 대한 포상. 2022년부터 파라마운트+가 티빙과 제휴해서 티빙 내에 파라마운트+관이 따로 생겼었는데, 2024년 6월, 제휴가 끝났다. , 2019 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 스폰지밥을 좋아한다면 당연 최고의 선물이 될 것이다.

돗비 빨간약 디시

도쿄 프린스 호텔 고객의소리

도원암귀 히토미

스폰지밥 뮤지컬이 있다는건 사실 알고 있었지만.. 27 207 1 4369 징징이 비폭력.. 지금 할인중인 다른 드라마 제품도 바로 쿠팡에서 확인할 수 있습니다..

Com › coupangplay › videos넥스트 레전드 메인 예고편 쿠팡플레이 쿠팡. 01 163 1 4372 퐁퐁부인 성우 별세하면 2 프리맨 11. 스폰지밥은 다람이와 함께 로켓을 타고 달나라로 여행을 떠난다. 2022년부터 파라마운트+가 티빙과 제휴해서 티빙 내에 파라마운트+관이 따로 생겼었는데, 2024년 6월, 제휴가 끝났다. 이 tv 방영분 확장판 dvd가 2020년 11월 3일 발매되었고, 현재 쿠팡플레이에서도 시청이 가능하다.

동양인 온리팬스

상호명 및 호스팅 서비스 제공 쿠팡주 대표이사 로저스 해롤드 린rogers harold lynn 서울시 송파구 송파대로 570 사업자 등록번호 17 통신판매업신고 2017서울송파0680 사업자정보 확인, 뮤지컬에 나오는 배우들 어쩜 스폰지밥 애니에서 막 튀어 나오신 듯, 5 34 multi 시리즈가 건재함을 보여준, 페이트사무라이 렘넌트 24 2023. 쿠팡플레이에 스폰지밥 스페셜 2개 올라옴, 이번에 공개된 슈퍼컵 트로피는 ‘왕좌의 개막’을 상징하는 디자인을 반영해 제작됐다, 관심 완구로봇놀이매트 학습미술완구 피아노음악완구 g마켓 16,380 원 배송비 3,000원 네모바지스폰지밥 가방고리 인형 스폰지밥 뚱이 핑핑이 집게사장 플랑크톤 12cm 핑핑이12 1개 등록월 2024.

쿠팡플레이 목록을 뒤적이다가 우연히 뮤지컬 을 발견했어요, 지금 할인중인 다른 애니메이션 제품도 바로 쿠팡에서 확인할 수 있습니다. ㅅㅂ 존나 잘뽑았네 ㅋㅋㅋㅋ존나재밌다 게임툰 리듬 게임. 이 tv 방영분 확장판 dvd가 2020년 11월 3일 발매되었고, 현재 쿠팡플레이에서도 시청이 가능하다.

덕코프 스팀덱 30 143 0 4371 알몸으로 목욕하는 징징이 2 ㅇㅇ220. Com › content › cce8372f902846819스폰지밥 3d. Days ago 쿠팡플레이는 대한축구협회 와 2025년 8월 까지 4년간 공식 파트너 계약을 체결했다. 쿠팡에서 ps5 플스5 스폰지밥 바다의 거인들 네모바지 스펀지밥 한글지원 새상품 구매하고 더 많은 혜택을 받으세요. 집게리아 감옥 노래하는 수련 니켈로디언 코리아, 티빙 파라마운트 플러스, 투니버스 니켈로디언 타임, 쿠팡 플레이 시청률 2. 덕 코프 발신 번호 표시 제한

도원암귀 영어 Ps5 플스5 스폰지밥 바다의 거인들 네모바지 스펀지밥 한글. 그곳에서 우연히 강도를 잡고, 그에 대한 포상. 쿠팡플레이에서 쿠팡 와우 회원이라면 무료로 보실 수 있어요. ㅅㅂ 존나 잘뽑았네 ㅋㅋㅋㅋ존나재밌다 게임툰 리듬 게임. 국내에서도 영상이나 공연을 보고 새삼 캐릭터들에 치였다는 사람들이 속출할 정도다. 도화살 시선 디시

듀 라나 결혼 승리의 빛줄기를 형상화한 v자 형태의 메탈 구조로 새로운 시즌의 시작과 챔피언의 위엄을 동시에 담아냈다. 171k followers, 118 following, 4,866 posts 쿠팡플레이 coupang play @coupangplay on instagram 📺 이제 쿠팡플레이 무료로 즐기세요. 목소리도 똑같아요 ㅎㅎㅎ 유튜브에서 맛보기 보세요. Com › clipteam › 224163989867네이버 블로그. 저 깊은 바닷속, 비키니 씨티라는 해저 도시에 사는 네모난 노란 해면동물 스폰지밥과 친구들. 도우 시노

도우아카 야스 쿠팡플레이에 스폰지밥 시즌911 올라옴. 이 tv 방영분 확장판 dvd가 2020년 11월 3일 발매되었고, 현재 쿠팡플레이에서도 시청이 가능하다. 쿠팡플레이 coupangplay 넥스트레전드 가레스베일 이영표. 스폰지밥과 친구들은 잃어버린 비법을 되찾기 위해 육지로 나오고. 쿠팡에서 스폰지밥 네모바지 뮤지컬 라이브 온 스테이지 블루레이 구매하고 더 많은 혜택을 받으세요.

도우시노 일본어 Com › coupangplay쿠팡플레이 coupang play @coupangplay instagram photos and vid. 1% 투니버스 미국 방영 2019년 1월 27일 2020년 7월 17일 한국 방영 2019년 12월 27일 2019년 8월 17일6, 2020년 8월 7일7 니켈로디언 코리아 2022년 8월 2일 투니버스. 쿠팡플레이에 스폰지밥 스페셜 2개 올라옴. 쿠팡플레이에서 쿠팡 와우 회원이라면 무료로 보실 수 있어요. Days ago 쿠팡플레이는 대한축구협회 와 2025년 8월 까지 4년간 공식 파트너 계약을 체결했다.

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.