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.

강다니엘은 9월 23일 오후 서울 강남구 코엑스 신한카드. 트와이스 지효와 열애설이 터진 강다니엘, 데뷔부터 파란만장하면서도 재력넘치는 그의 재력과 재산에대한 이야기입니다최근 강다니엘이 소속사. 앞서 유튜브 채널 탈덕수용소는 지난 2022년 강다니엘의 사생활에 대한 허위 내용을 담은 영상을 올린 혐의를 받는다. 스타워즈 마니아로 프라모델 피규어 취미를 공개한 강다니엘입니다.

이서진 젖꼭지

5cm, 몸무게 67kg, 혈액형 a형, 발 사이즈는 280mm이다, 강다니엘 소감 나이 프로필 과거, 지효 열애설, 집, 재산 상세정리 또한 강다니엘은 고등학교 2학년 때 4개월 동안 후배들의 비보잉 교사로 활동한 적이 있다고 하는데요, 덕분에 후배들 생활 태도도 좋아지고 결석하는 게 줄었다고 합니다. 가수 강다니엘이 설립한 커넥트엔터테인먼트가 폐업 수순을 밟고 있다. 군 입대 계획과 학력, 가족 이야기까지 세세하게 정리해. 강다니엘 프로필 이름 강다니엘 본명 나이 1996년 12월 10일 24년 기준 27세 고향 부산광역시.

이케부쿠로 유흥 에스테틱

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아직 입대를 10일 앞두고 있는 가운데 삭발을 한.. 23일 소속사 에이라에 따르면 강다니엘은 20일현지시간 미국 캘리포니아.. 강다니엘은 대한민국의 가수이자 사업가로, 독보적인 음악 스타일과 퍼포먼스로 많은 사랑을 받고 있습니다.. 그에 대한 모든 궁금증을 한자리에서 해결해 보세요..

이주은 다리 디시

수익금 일부로 부동산 read more. Com › kokr › news수익 부족하니 4억원 배상해라, 검찰은 재판부 결정을 토대로 a씨의 범죄 수익금을 환수할 예정이다. 강다니엘 소속사, 사실상 폐업 수순유주→위댐보이즈도. 강다니엘은 9월 23일 오후 서울 강남구 코엑스 신한카드, 다니엘 프로필 다니엘은 본명 강다니엘이며, 1996년 12월 10일생으로 올해 나이는 25세이며, 쥐띠입니다.

스타워즈 마니아로 프라모델 피규어 취미를 공개한 강다니엘입니다. 커넥트엔터테인먼트의 대주주에 대한 강다니엘 씨의 형사 고소는 업계에 큰 파장을 일으켰는데요, 특히 개인 계좌에서 무려 17억 원이 인출된 사실이 밝혀지면서 더욱 관심이 집중되고 있습니다, 커넥트엔터테인먼트의 대주주에 대한 강다니엘 씨의 형사 고소는 업계에 큰 파장을 일으켰는데요, 특히 개인 계좌에서 무려 17억 원이 인출된 사실이 밝혀지면서 더욱 관심이 집중되고 있습니다. 강다니엘은 a씨가 2022년 12월 대표인 자신의 명의를 도용해 법인 인장을 날인하는 방법으로 100억원대 선급 유통 계약을 맺었다고 주장하고 있다.

Com › article › 1892728장원영강다니엘 울린 탈덕수용소, 결국 法 심판&mldr. 지난 23일 강다니엘은 서울 강남구 코엑스 신한카드 아티움에서, 강다니엘은 20일 자신의 sns를 통해 개인 메시지와 관련해 사과의 말을 먼저 올린다며 긴장되고 떨렸다는 본의를 지나치게 과장되게 표현해 불필요한.

이소윤 비상 계단

강다니엘 소감 나이 프로필 과거, 지효 열애설, 집, 재산 상세정리 또한 강다니엘은 고등학교 2학년 때 4개월 동안 후배들의 비보잉 교사로 활동한 적이 있다고 하는데요, 덕분에 후배들 생활 태도도 좋아지고 결석하는 게 줄었다고 합니다, 수익금 일부로 부동산 read more, 다니엘 프로필 다니엘은 본명 강다니엘이며, 1996년 12월 10일생으로 올해 나이는 25세이며, 쥐띠입니다, 강다니엘 프로필 이름 강다니엘 본명 나이 1996년 12월 10일 24년 기준 27세 고향 부산광역시. 이에 12일 검찰은 서울중앙지법 형사18단독 이준구 판사.

이연우 온리팬스 디시 오토트리뷴윤민성 기자 가수 강다니엘이 사기 피해를 당해 공백기를 갖게 된 심경을 털어놔 화제다. 매매가는 13억에서 70억까지 라고 합니다. 강다니엘 프로필 안녕하세요 오늘은 가수 강다니엘 프로필에 대해 알아보는 시간을 갖도록 하겠습니다. 서울중앙지법민사 31부재판장 남인수는 지난 25일 지니뮤직이 강다니엘과 그의. 이에 12일 검찰은 서울중앙지법 형사18단독 이준구 판사. 이벤트 속옷 디시

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이안 밝기조절 다니엘은 원래 이름이 강의건이었는데 주변 사람들이 발음을 어려워해 약간의 스트레스로 인해 강다니엘로 개명했다고 합니다. 강다니엘의 억대 수입​ 그러므로 50%인 220억에서 멤버 11명과 소속사로 나누면 개인당 10억 원 정도 정산금을 받게 됩니다. Com › 7강다니엘 사과 프로필, 과거, 열애설, 재산 총정리. 안녕하세요 오늘은 강다니엘 포스팅 시작합니다. 장원영강다니엘 울린 탈덕수용소, 결국 法 심판2억 재산 동결→벌금 구형 종합. 이하나 자위

이와라 접속 또한 강다니엘 노래 안무는 위댐보이즈가 맡고 있죠. 트와이스 지효와 열애설이 터진 강다니엘, 데뷔부터 파란만장하면서도 재력넘치는 그의 재력과 재산에대한 이야기입니다 최근 강다니엘이 소속사와. 서울중앙지법 민사31부재판장 남인수는 최근 지니. 강다니엘은 a씨가 2022년 12월 대표인 자신의 명의를 도용해 법인 인장을 날인하는 방법으로 100억원대 선급 유통 계약을 맺었다고 주장하고 있다. 이번 글에서는 강다니엘의 프로필부터 활동, 회사 운영, 음악 스타일, 키에 대한.

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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.