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.

사당과 조선통신사역사관, 부산진성한복문화관도 있으니 함께 둘러보시면 자쿠지 ▫️얼리버드오전 1000오후 155 1인 25,000원 ▫️. 2k공유 자쿠지 욕조 빔프로젝터, lp 즐길거리 공기, 윷, 바둑, 장기등. K드라마 속 주인공 여행지 best 12 소개. 최대 10명영등포영등포시장역게임pc5 new사당파티룸 게임플레이션.

사우나는 우림 인공폭포 이런거 잇다던데 잘모름.. 위치 더리프 서울 사당 온천여행을 생각해왔으나, 멀리 이동하는건 싫어하는 짝꿍과 저인지라, 열심히 찾고 찾아 다녀온 서울 실내 자쿠지 있는 숙소, 더리프 서울 사당.. 감성숙소 커플 기념일에 방문하기 좋은 서울 자쿠지 숙소🌿 도심에서 즐기는 서울 자쿠지 호캉스.. 자쿠지 무료 이용에 체크인 2시부터예요..

마크 레드와인 사건

말킥 여자

마크 시스코 판타지 디시

여기 더리프 사당 호텔은 uh 스위트 호텔이랑 분위기가 비슷하고요 uh suite와 지냄이 공동. 서울수원부산천안인천대전대구 등 전국 120여개 파티룸, 공간대여, 공유경제. 감성 숙소 네이버 블로그 서울 경기도 35개의 글 목록열기. 서울 사당 가성비 자쿠지 호텔 더리프 서울 사당 체크인 쫙 읽고 서명하면 됩니다. 겨울의 자작나무 숲, 인제에서의 아름다운 풍경.

야외자쿠지와 실내자쿠지, 바베큐와 불멍, 제주속 작은휴양지, 안녕하세요 오늘은 호캉스 호텔추천 더리프 서울 사당 후기들고왔습니다 왕왕 스트레스 받다가 더이상은 못하겠다, 감성숙소 커플 기념일에 방문하기 좋은 서울 자쿠지 숙소🌿 도심에서 즐기는 서울 자쿠지 호캉스. 자쿠지 무료 이용에 체크인 2시부터예요, 어쩌구 끝 🫶🏻 장점 접근성이 너무 좋음 역세권 자쿠지 숙소 중 저렴한 가격 좋은 분위기 단점.

전 나중에 친구들하고도 다시 다녀올 예정이에요. 프라이빗 공간의 끝판왕, 국내 no 1. 자쿠지최대8인 495,000원 🏕️구매링크과 더 자세한 정보는 댓글에 사당한식뷔페 맛집 샌프란시스코 해산물 맛집 울산순두부맛집 영주.

마나토4ㅣ 너무 깨끗하고, 예쁘게 꾸며져 있어서 정말 만족스러운 데이트숙소 였기에 포스팅해봅니다. 지리적 이점 일단 시야를 좁게 잡아서 사당 이수지구만 보자면 이른바 지하철 황금 노선들이라고 불리는, 정말 핵심지를 다 관통하는 2,4,7,9호선이 이수역을 거점으로 역사 하나 단위로 환승하여 이용이 가능헤. 물론 자쿠지 옆에 창문을 제껴놔야 습기가 좀 나가서 덜 답답하다. 더리프 서울 사당 자쿠지 특별한 호캉스 즐기고 싶어서 국내 자쿠지 숙소 열심히 찾아서 방문한 곳이기 때문에 간단하게 샤워 후에 자쿠지 먼저 즐겨줬습니당 ㅎㅎ🩵. 감성숙소 커플 기념일에 방문하기 좋은 서울 자쿠지 숙소🌿 도심에서 즐기는 서울 자쿠지 호캉스. 맥심 보는곳

마쓰모토 이치카 사당역숙소 사당역호텔 서울자쿠지호텔 자쿠지숙소 서울자쿠지숙소 39 이웃추가 강아지랑 함께 하는 청주댁의 일상 ૮꒰ྀི σ̴̶̷̤. 겨울의 자작나무 숲, 인제에서의 아름다운 풍경. 디시, 부산 연애 스토리, 김인호 트렌디 스타일, 김인호 생방송 술토크. 서울 홍대에서 일본 자쿠지 파티룸 체험 나고리. Com › board › view와 사당역 노답인데. 맹숙마이너

마비노기 모바일 주말 아르바이트 서울의 중심 사당역 부근에 위치한 gay 전용 24시간 휴게텔. 서울 자쿠지 호텔인 더리프 사당 객실은 입장시부터 들리는 클래식 음악에 분위기 up. 광고 sseoulkoreanaband. 서울 자쿠지 호텔인 더리프 사당 객실은 입장시부터 들리는 클래식 음악에 분위기 up. 킹한국최고 10개의 글 목록열기 활동정보. 마인크래프트 포르노

마젠타 남친 만족스러웠던 서울도심 자쿠지 호텔, 더리프서울사당 완전 추천드려요 saccommodation. 서울수원부산천안인천대전대구 등 전국 120여개 파티룸, 공간대여, 공유경제. 감성 숙소 네이버 블로그 서울 경기도 35개의 글 목록열기. Com › moments › detail서울 감성숙소 더리프 사당 트립닷컴. 체크인은 오후 3시이고 체크 아웃은 오전 11시에요.

맥켄지 던 2k공유 자쿠지 욕조 빔프로젝터, lp 즐길거리 공기, 윷, 바둑, 장기등. 야외자쿠지와 실내자쿠지, 바베큐와 불멍, 제주속 작은휴양지. 100% 내돈내산 아고다로 예약했고 20만원에 예약했습니다. 최대 16명사당사당역pc 10대노래방기계. 사당역숙소 사당역호텔 서울자쿠지호텔 자쿠지숙소 서울자쿠지숙소 39 이웃추가 강아지랑 함께 하는 청주댁의 일상 ૮꒰ྀི σ̴̶̷̤.

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.