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.

Com › best › 9425891686멕시코 대통령 한국 대통령에 에펨코리아. 18 테리스초이 417 못생겨서 고민이라는 연습생에게 bts가 한 말. 10 1029 bts 제로슈가 기원 댓글로 가기 476 6 best 아카이누 2024. Mp4 개댕청 조회 수 250938 추천 수 476 댓글 242 s.

Ntrh-015

Newsnaver

Fm2026 에펨자유 통합 패치 자동설치 2026자료안내 통합그래픽 패치 통합모바일fmmfmt 스킨일반자료 전술자료실 전술토론 선수스탭 플레이팁 fm2024 에펨자유 2024자료안내 스킨일반자료 전술자료실 전술토론 선수스탭 플레이팁 fc 2군 2군, 구게시판 목록.. 본인이 bts인 걸 잊음 유머움짤이슈.. 07 2038 포텐 지드래곤 모창하는 찌드래곤을 모창하는 bts 정국 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ.. Com › 9426862565스 x 멕시코 대통령 한국 대통령에게 bts 추가공연 요청 100만명..

이곳은 에펨코리아 운영진과는 무관합니다. 10 1538 하나둘씩 전역하는구나 bts 얼른 다모여서 케이팝 다시 부흥좀 시켜줘라 3 세르히오부스택츠 2025. Bts is a south korean group comprised of seven members rm, jin, suga, jhope, jimin, v and jung kook. 숙박업소 일하는데 bts의 힘을 이제 알았다. 나 영어 못하는데 급박하니까 술술 나오고 쏙쏙 들리더라 비행기 예약했는데 날짜 잘못예약해서 10분만에 취소하려니까 중개사이트 잘못골라서 수수료 100%책정됨 중개사이트랑 통화로 수수료딜하는데 내가 그렇게 영어 잘하는지 처음알았음 뱅기값 200정도.

24 원더러스 216 사자보이즈보다 훨씬 빨리 저승사자랑 콜라보했던 bts 112 유머 움짤 2025, The pair starred in a new promo for the upcoming show. 24 원더러스 216 사자보이즈보다 훨씬 빨리 저승사자랑 콜라보했던 bts 112 유머 움짤 2025. 28 1213 현 상황에 대한 bts의 발언 햄스트링볶음밥 조회 수 301468 추천 수 940 댓글 193 s.

Ne__6i Video

I need u chords by bts @ ultimateguitar.. 09 2209 방탄이랑 같이 군생활 하면 재밌을거 같은데 ㅋㅋ 노리치 2024.. Browse over thousands of templates that are compatible with after effects, cinema 4d, blender, sony vegas, photoshop, avee player, panzoid, filmora, no software, kinemaster, sketch, premiere pro, final cut pro, davinci resolve.. 근데 실제로는 사소한거에 긁혀서 저런 가사 쓰는거 아니깐 전세계를 휘젓는 bts의 체급에 비해 그릇이 존나 작아보임 3 21필립람 2024..

09 2209 방탄이랑 같이 군생활 하면 재밌을거 같은데 ㅋㅋ 노리치 2024. 이곳은 에펨코리아 운영진과는 무관합니다. Bts world tour kicks off april 9 at goyang stadium in korea before heading to 34 cities for 82 shows, making it the largestever kpop tour by.

S46 트위터 화력 ㅈ되네 ㅋㅋㅋ 게시판 이력 포텐 666 방출. , 안녕, 라이언 고슬링 b_news, 안녕 바비. Beyond direct economic effects, bts continues to play a major role in shaping koreas global image. 12 1222 bts조차도 한녀새끼들의 패악질을 못 피해가는데 남자들 스스로 뭐 외모가 어째서 여자를 못 만나네 어쩌네 이런 자학개그들 하지 마셈 ㅋㅋㅋㅋ.

The uprising gagasi fm, Club › lists › suggestions안녕, 라이언 고슬링. 나한테는 bts는 그냥 너무 아이돌 노래스럽달까 빅뱅은 그래도 신곡 나오면 노래방 차트에 쫙 떴었고 몇몇 곡은 지금도 잘 부르고 그러는데 bts는 노래 중에서 노래방에 부를만한 게 있나. Com › korean › articlesbts 전원 입대활동 재개 시점은.

palm springs 무료 영화 Cardi b & alexander skarsgård get ready for snl. 축구 게임인 풋볼 매니저 를 다루는 곳이었으나 규모가 커지며 종합 커뮤니티로 발전하였다. Cardi b & alexander skarsgård get ready for snl. 을 외치며 등장하는 라이언 고슬링과 마고로비. 23 와해성혁신 509 김형태 액션게임 관련 말하는데 공감되네 273. pikajoyoo

nurumy Fm2026 에펨자유 통합 패치 자동설치 2026자료안내 통합그래픽 패치 통합모바일fmmfmt 스킨일반자료 전술자료실 전술토론 선수스탭 플레이팁 fm2024 에펨자유 2024자료안내 스킨일반자료 전술자료실 전술토론 선수스탭 플레이팁 fc 2군 2군, 구게시판 목록. Club › lists › suggestions안녕, 라이언 고슬링. 12 lqlqlqlq 301 난해한 파리올림픽 보다가 la 역체감 지림. 포텐 터짐 최신순 유머움짤이슈 유머 2024. Bts ulwesine lomama bomthandazo 1 day ago 2. palm springs 시청하세요 온라인

pding 마사지 02 2001 얘는 별로 안올리는데 5500만이고 6천만까지 가파르게 상승중인 순간에 터뜨림 지금까지 있었으면 진짜 1억까지도 바라볼수 있었을꺼같음 진짜 개간지긴함 ㄹㅇ 9. 한국어 랩가사가 들어간 최초의 핫 100 1위 곡이고, 원곡은 7위가 최고 기록이었으나 bts remix 버전 발매로 인해 첫 1위를 했다. 마그네틱 따라부르는 bts 멤버들ㄷㄷ 유머움짤이슈. 24 원더러스 216 사자보이즈보다 훨씬 빨리 저승사자랑 콜라보했던 bts 112 유머 움짤 2025. 로는 ‘아미’라고 불리는 bts의 공식 팬클럽에도 가입했다. nyangnyang1004

pc 근 자동 수축 In the ministry of culture, sports and. 10 1538 하나둘씩 전역하는구나 bts 얼른 다모여서 케이팝 다시 부흥좀 시켜줘라 3 세르히오부스택츠 2025. Uaphiwe jali uhlabelele. The pair starred in a new promo for the upcoming show. Club › lists › suggestions안녕, 라이언 고슬링.

ne_6i pikpak Bts, the sevenmember kpop powerhouse including rm. 마그네틱 따라부르는 bts 멤버들ㄷㄷ. Check it out read more. 먼데이 투즈데이 웬스데이 해도 내군생활 안보여 v금은동v 2024. Com › best › 9425891686멕시코 대통령 한국 대통령에 에펨코리아.

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.