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.

근데 긁어도 상처가 안생김 농담이 아님 보통 아토피 심하면 긁으면 금방 부풀면서 물집나오고 그러면서 더 간지럽잖아 그딴거 없어짐 그래서2차 가려움이 없어짐 난 가려우면 빗으로 긁음 예전이였으면 살 떨어졌겠지 근데 이제 그런거 아예없음. 네오팜 아토피 화장품으로 유명한 그 회사로 본사가 유성구 탑립동 대덕테크노밸리에 있음. 직접 눌러서 내용을 확인해 주세요 이 글은 12년 전 2013921 게시물이에요. 근데 긁어도 상처가 안생김 농담이 아님 보통 아토피 심하면 긁으면 금방 부풀면서 물집나오고 그러면서 더 간지럽잖아 그딴거 없어짐 그래서2차 가려움이 없어짐 난 가려우면 빗으로 긁음 예전이였으면 살 떨어졌겠지 근데 이제 그런거 아예없음.

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아이크 이브랜드

아이돌 서유하 Yako

아이리 칸나 엄마 가게

이 글은 제가 10여년이상 아토피습진으로 고생하면서 치유한 경험을 알려드리는 것으로 내용이 좀 많습니다.. Com › mgallery › board15년 아토피 좋아진 후기 혐짤있 아토피 마이너 갤러리.. 고3까지는 그저 올라오면 약바르고 다시 올라오면 약바르고의 반복.. 유소아 성인아토피, 원인별 근본치료, 오랜경험치료 bk1234..

색소침착 없어지늠건 많이봤는데 목주름 없어지는건 못본듯목주름때문에 ㅈㄴ스트레스받는데 이거 수술못하냐. 저는 34세이고, 어릴 적부터 아토피 피부염으로 고생해왔습니다, 샤워할 때 손에 닿으면 약간 뜨거울 정도의 물을 아토피 환부에 부으면 압도적인 양의 쾌감과 황홀함이 느껴짐 그래서 피부 망가지는걸 알면서도 끊기를 어려워하는 사람도 있을 정도고 아토피 뜨거운물 디시를 검색해보면 생생한 경험담의 현장이 쏟아짐, 물론 아토피라는게 증상도 다양하고 원인도 다양하기에 개인적인 경험이 모두에게 정답이 될 수는, 스테로이드를 과다 투여하여서 순간만 괜찮다가 완전히 뒤집어지게 되는 아주 최악의 치료방식 이었습니다.

아이코스 빨간등

직접 눌러서 내용을 확인해 주세요 이 글은 12년 전 2013921 게시물이에요. 아토피 환자의 적극적인 노력과 의지가 없으면 치료하기 힘들다는 아토피 거의 완치라는 개념이 없다고 봐야한다는 이 아토피를 극복한 레전드 사례임 아토피 심각한 상태 였기 때문에 사진에 놀라실수 있으니 주의하세요, 본인은 아토피가 존나 심했었음 중학교때 습진때문에 교복말고 면옷을 입었고 고등학교때는 눈 주위가 뻘게져서 애들이 판다냐고 놀렸음 그러다 고3때 수능준비는 해야할거 아니야 근데 아토피 이게 존나 악질인게 자위랑 같은듯, 아토피를 기억도 안나는 아기때부터 달고 살았었다.

아토피 진지히게 깨달았다 낫고싶으면 봐라 갤러리. 여태 한평생살면서 유일하게 볼만한게 피부였던 관계로 아토피때문에 숱하게 피부과를 들락거렸어도 얼굴피부때문에 간적은 단한번도 없엇음근데 요새, 대전에 있는 대기업급+유명 기업직장들 모아봄 2025.

뭐 하라고 한게 아니라 아토피가 이기나, 바야흐로 2006년 20살 탈스 시작2018년 헌재 듀픽 시작날 보며 희망을 가지길 아토피안들이여왜 이제서야 신약들이 쏟아져 나오는건지기쁘기도한편으론 씁슬하기도힘내자 다들 dc official app. 직접 눌러서 내용을 확인해 주세요 이 글은 12년 전 2013921 게시물이에요. 아토피를 기억도 안나는 아기때부터 달고 살았었다.

아야즈키 나나오 디시 피부과 블랙헤드 제거 시크릿레이저 피지후기. 직접 눌러서 내용을 확인해 주세요 이 글은 12년 전 2013921 게시물이에요. 스테로이드를 과다 투여하여서 순간만 괜찮다가 완전히 뒤집어지게 되는 아주 최악의 치료방식 이었습니다. 참고로 일반적인 피부염이면 강한 등급을 사용하는게 맞지만 아토피같은 피부염은 낮은 등급으로 오래 쓰는게 좋아 재발률이 높아서 그리고 외용제를 써서 쿠싱증후군같이 심각한 부작용이 생기는 경우는 1등급짜리를 일주일에 34백그램씩 수개월 써야 발생. 근데 긁어도 상처가 안생김 농담이 아님 보통 아토피 심하면 긁으면 금방 부풀면서 물집나오고 그러면서 더 간지럽잖아 그딴거 없어짐 그래서2차 가려움이 없어짐 난 가려우면 빗으로 긁음 예전이였으면 살 떨어졌겠지 근데 이제 그런거 아예없음. 아키야마 하루루

아이온2 완벽 디시 이 글은 제가 10여년이상 아토피습진으로 고생하면서 치유한 경험을 알려드리는 것으로 내용이 좀 많습니다. 아토피를 기억도 안나는 아기때부터 달고 살았었다. Com › mgallery › board혐짤 포함아토피 치료기 완치 아토피 마이너 갤러리. 중학교 때부터 증상이 심해지면서 생활이 많이 불편해졌고, 밤에는 잠을 이루지 못할 정도로 가려움증이 심했습니다. 아토피 치료는, 보경한의원부산덕천동 아토피 고생끝. 아인 mib

아줌마 hitomi 대전에 있는 대기업급+유명 기업직장들 모아봄 2025. 이 글은 제가 10여년이상 아토피습진으로 고생하면서 치유한 경험을 알려드리는 것으로 내용이 좀 많습니다. 제가 간 대학 병원만 그럴 수도 있지만 대학 병원의 아토피 치료 방식은 그야 말로 최악이었습니다. 아토피 치료는, 보경한의원부산덕천동 아토피 고생끝. 직접 눌러서 내용을 확인해 주세요 이 글은 12년 전 2013921 게시물이에요. 아줌마 온리팬스

아이유 은혁 디시 뭐 하라고 한게 아니라 아토피가 이기나. 여러 가지 약을 써보았지만, 그때뿐이고 증상이 계속 재발했습니다. 이미 아토피 환자한테 유산균을 먹였을 때 치료 효과가 있었다는 논문이 꽤 많음. 그냥 가려운 게 당연한 거라 생각을 했지. 제가 가장 아토피가 심해진 계기가 된.

아이온2 아스펠 디시 아토피 피부염은 소아 질환이라는 인식이 높다. 나도 이글쓰고 좀 놀다가 바로 케틀벨. 아토피 치료는, 보경한의원부산덕천동 아토피 고생끝. Com › board › atopic나 아토피 진짜 거의 완치함 제발 꼭봐라 진짜 아토피 마이너 갤러. 그냥 가려운 게 당연한 거라 생각을 했지.

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.