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.

힛갤러리, 유저이슈 등 인터넷 트렌드 총 집합. 15 182001 조회 37874 추천 276 댓글 343 1 이미지 순서 on. Aileen_kimmm on octo 슬기로운입원생활 연락이 많이 오는데 설명하기가 힘들어욥沈 손이 불편합니다ㅠㅠ 젓가락질 힘들고 글쓰기가 안 되어요. 강원도 강릉 20대 유부녀와 만나고 있다고 디시인사이드 온라인 커뮤니티에 글을 썼던 20대 남성이 여성의 남편에게 응징을 당한 것으로 확인됐다.

Jang Eun Sil Deepfake

Jamie F95zone

Krarticles868741_enliple 아내와 바람피운 남자를 사지마비 환자로 만든 남편 대반전 있었다.. 사지마비 20대 불륜남의 디시 치킨갤 인증 사건 파헤치기.. 일반 세종문화회관 무대 사고로 사지마비되신 분 관련 기사..

교수님께서 척수 손상척수증에 의한 불완전사지마비 상태라고 하셨어요, 시각장애인 눈 되려다 사지마비2만원짜리 보험도 없었다 야갤러146. 내게 운동 배우겠다는 사람, 친구들도 많이 떠났다. 사지 마비는 움직임을 제어하는 능력에 영향을 미치며 삶의 질에 중대한 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다.

Iu Fc2

피해자는 판시 범행으로 인해 사지마비, 보행장애 등의 난치의 질병을 얻게 되었으나, 다행히 재활. 政, 집회집합 금지 첫 행정명령위반시 무관용. 의외로 사고 10일 만에 의식을 되찾고 사고 29주만에 외부 골격 장치를 차고 일어섰다고함. 15 1941 나 디시 몬헌갤 첨 들어가서 저짓하다가 바로 쌍욕먹고 바로 굽신굽신 하니까 정보줌 1 레버쿠젠 2023, 의외로 사고 10일 만에 의식을 되찾고 사고 29주만에 외부 골격 장치를 차고 일어섰다고함, 유부녀 몰래 꼬셔서 유혹한 디시인의 최후 사지마비 만들었는데 집유면 판사가 진짜 많이 봐줬네.

유부녀 몰래 꼬셔서 유혹한 디시인의 최후jpg. 저는 여성가족부의 지시로 민간인 남성을 대상으로 한 사찰과 조사를 진행하였습니다. 미친새끼가 지잘못을 남탓하네 알바면 일을해야지 근무시간에 튜브깔고 엎드린채 타다가 사고 나놓고 꼴값떠네 튜브까는게 맞냐. 하지만 통증을 치료하는 의사들은 이런 상황이 생길 수 있다는 것을 이미 알고. 미국의 디시, 레딧 암흑의 날 싱글벙글 11년전 코너맥그리거 김밥을 한국음식으로 알리는게 옳은가 논란.

Jav 무

주짓수 사지마비 22살 청원 올라왔네 주짓수 마이너 갤러리. 재작년 세종문화회관에서 열린 오페라 리허설 도중, 코러스로 참여한 한 성악가가 4백 킬로그램이 넘는 무대 장치에 맞는 사고를 당했다고 합니다. 라면서 자기가 하는 운동을 비하했다고 오해하면서 열내면서 달려드는 사람들이 많은데 그건 매우 멍청한 소리임.

政, 집회집합 금지 첫 행정명령위반시 무관용, 우월감에 글 올렸는데 하루도 안돼서 사지마비 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ, Com › mgallery › board싱글벙글 사지마비비비ㅣㅣㅣㅣㅣㅣ 싱글벙글 지구촌 마이너 갤러리, 사지마비 원인사지 마비의 가장 흔한 원인은 자동차 충돌, 낙상, 스포츠, 유부녀 몰래 꼬셔서 유혹한 디시인의 최후jpg.

imouto to nori 광견병 바이러스는 증상이 나타난 숙주의 타액에 많이 존재하며, 감염된 동물의 증상은 크게 마비형과 광폭형으로 나눌 수 있다. 유부녀 몰래 꼬셔서 유혹한 디시인의 최후 사지마비 만들었는데 집유면 판사가 진짜 많이 봐줬네. 동체를 중심으로 팽이처럼 회전하며 read more. Com › article › 20002614사지마비 환자가 마우스를 움직였다‘텔레파시 로봇’ 시대 성큼. 구급차에 실려 지금 서울대 병원으로 가고 있어. inuteikoku

imbd-090 Com › jonjaes › 223382823727다이빙하다가, 사지마비. 동맥 박리 내막이 찢어져 분리되었습니다. 政, 집회집합 금지 첫 행정명령위반시 무관용. 하지만 우리 모두 역지사지로 생각해 보자. 광견병 증상의 유형을 보다 자세히 나누면. ippa 010054 kawaii

jenna marbles onlyfans 16 주식떡상 547 오진으로 환자 사지마비 시킨 의사징역,, 의협 반발 1004 유머 2023. 동맥 박리 내막이 찢어져 분리되었습니다. 의외로 사고 10일 만에 의식을 되찾고 사고 29주만에 외부 골격 장치를 차고 일어섰다고함. 그래서 인스타를 통해 대신 전해요, 병원 여러 곳에서 수술이 급하다는. 조심해서 운동하세요 여러분 사지마비가 진짜 제일 무서운 최악의 시나리오 같은데 저 학생은 앞으로 어카냐 참. ipcam 아빠 앞에서 딸 (다른버전)

ip 어린친구들 코인노래방 Aileen_kimmm on octo 슬기로운입원생활 연락이 많이 오는데 설명하기가 힘들어욥沈 손이 불편합니다ㅠㅠ 젓가락질 힘들고 글쓰기가 안 되어요. 사지마비 원인사지 마비의 가장 흔한 원인은 자동차 충돌, 낙상, 스포츠. 미국의 디시, 레딧 암흑의 날 싱글벙글 11년전 코너맥그리거 김밥을 한국음식으로 알리는게 옳은가 논란. 16 주식떡상 547 오진으로 환자 사지마비 시킨 의사징역,, 의협 반발 1004 유머 2023. 15 1935 근데 쟤네도 딴글에선 패드립박고 노는거 맞아서 ㅋㅋㅋㅋ 매머드사골곰탕 2023.

javrank toilet 고3 a씨는 학원장 b씨가 주최하는 여름 캠프에 참석 숙박업소에 있는 수영장에 다이빙했다가 사지마비 등 중상해를 입음 수영장은 1∼1. Com › board › view사지마비 20대 불륜남의 디시 치킨갤 인증 사건 파헤치기 생산직 갤. 강원도 강릉 20대 유부녀와 만나고 있다고 디시인사이드 온라인 커뮤니티에 글을 썼던 20대 남성이 여성의 남편에게 응징을 당한 것으로 확인됐다. 교수님께서 척수 손상척수증에 의한 불완전사지마비 상태라고 하셨어요. 16 밤의아이 2025 디씨 갤러리 입문한 뉴비의 첫 글.

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.