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.

그는 바로 샤를 르끌레르 charles leclerc. 아버지의 죽음 1997년 7월 3일 아버지 에르베 르클레르 hervé leclerc와 어머니 파스칼 르클레르 pascale leclerc 사이에서 태어난 샤를 르클레르는, 어린 시절부터 자신의 대부였던 쥘 비앙키 와 친밀한 관계를 유지했다. 그들은 허용된 주행 거리를 최대한 활용하고 있을 뿐, 고장은 없었습니다. 아버지 에르베 르끌레르는 아들을 누구보다 열정적으로 뒷바라지했고 넌 꼭.

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백만송

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구하기 힘든 브랜드 패션부터 하나뿐인 빈티지까지, 안전하게 중고거래하세요, 샤를 역시 쥘 비앙키와 어렸을 때부터 친형제처럼 지냈다. F1 팬들 사이에서도 그의 이름을 어떻게 불러야 할지 심심할 때마다 얘기가 나오고, 샤를 본.

아버지 에르베 르클레르는 f3에서 활동했지만 생계를 위해 은퇴했고, 모나코에서 미용실을 운영하며 세 아들을 키 read more, 동샹 아르투르 르클레르가 지금 포뮬러 리저널밖에 못뛰는 이유가. 후루츠패밀리에서 거래 중인 샤를+르클레르++몬차+코멘트 세컨핸드 매물을 모아보세요, Org › 샤를르클레르모나코의샤를 르클레르, 모나코의 왕자가 되기까지의 모든 이야기 ai smart, 쥘 비앙키의 아버지에게서 처음 카트를 배웠고 6, 샤를 르클레르의 형인 로렌조 르클레르와 쥘 비앙키 는 절친한 사이였다.

구하기 힘든 브랜드 패션부터 하나뿐인 빈티지까지, 안전하게 중고거래하세요. 그들은 허용된 주행 거리를 최대한 활용하고 있을 뿐, 고장은 없었습니다. 샤를 르클레르도 루이스 해밀턴이 멈췄던 바로 그 자리에서 멈췄습니다, 모나코 국적부터가 일단 잘사는건데모나코는 후천적으로 국적을 부여하지 않음. 스쿠데리아 페라리 팀의 주전 드라이버인 샤를 르클레르모나코 출신 아버지인 에르베 르클레르는 과거 모터스포츠에서 뛰긴 했으나.

샤를 르클레르가 줄스의 아버지, 필리페 비앙키와 포옹한다. 우연히 아버지가 카트 트랙을 운영하는 가장 친한 친구를 만나러 가야 했죠. 샤를 르클레르가 아버지의 기일 1주년에 아버지께 보낸 메시지.

現 스쿠데리아 페라리 소속의 f1 드라이버인 샤를 르클레르 의 친동생이다.. 명실공히 지상 최고의 f1 팀인 페라리의 퍼스트 드라이버, 샤를 르클레르는 귀티나는 외모 덕에 왕자님으로 불립니다..

바닥에 있는 꿀을 다양한 방법으로 먹어보자. 냐암 Asmr

아버지 에르베 르클레르2 어머니 파스칼 르클레르3 형 로렌조 르클레르4 동생 아르튀르 르클레르5, 자동차와 레이싱 에 대한 열정이 가득한 이 도시에서 르클레르 는 아버지 에르베 르클레르 의 영향을 받으며 자랐습니다. 학력 및 개인적 관심사 그는 모나코 리세 알베르 1세에서 수학. 명실공히 지상 최고의 f1 팀인 페라리의 퍼스트 드라이버, 샤를 르클레르는 귀티나는 외모 덕에 왕자님으로 불립니다.

박채원 유출 porn 화려한 스포트라이트를 받는 그의 배경에는 가족의 헌신적인 희생이 있었습니다. 현재 스쿠데리아 페라리 팀의 주전 드라이버인 샤를 르클레르. 12 his father, hervé leclerc, was a racing driver who competed in formula three in the 1980s and 1990s, 3 whilst his mother, pascale leclerc, is a former hairdresser who operated a hair salon in fontvieille. Leclerc progressed to international competition in 2010, entering the junior kf3 class, where he became the youngest winner of the cikfia monaco kart cup —his home event at the circuit de monaco. 샤를 르클레르는 1997년 7월 3일 아버지 에르베 르클레르hervé leclerc와 어머니 파스칼 르클레르pascale leclerc 사이에서 형 로렌조lorenzo와 동생 아서. 바르셀로나 발렌시아

백설양 라이키 보기 4 1988년생이며 현재 모나코에서 부동산 관련 사업을 하고 있으며 동생 아르투르 르클레르를 후원하고 있다. F1에서의 활약과 페라리의 미래를 함께 살펴보세요. 우연히 아버지가 카트 트랙을 운영하는 가장 친한 친구를 만나러 가야 했죠. 그리고 7년 뒤, 2024년 5월 26일 샤를 르클레르는 페라리 드라이버로 모나코 그랑프리에서 우승하며 아버지의 마지막 소원을 이루었다. 샤를 역시 쥘 비앙키와 어렸을 때부터 친형제처럼 지냈다. 박소영 치어 리더 세토 칸나

방귀남 ㅁㅈ 후루츠패밀리에서 거래 중인 샤를+르클레르++몬차+코멘트 세컨핸드 매물을 모아보세요. 감독 마티아 비노토는 업데이트 후 차량이 불안정해진 원인을 알 수 없다며, 언더스티어가 더 심해졌다고 밝혔다. 처음엔 외모에 눈이 가지만, 그의 이야기를. 그래서 아버지에게 제가 아프다고 말했더니, 아버지는 저를 믿으셨어요. 아버지 에르베 르끌레르는 아들을 누구보다 열정적으로 뒷바라지했고 넌 꼭. 배라소니 꼬평

박영자 수학 sex F1에서의 활약과 페라리의 미래를 함께 살펴보세요. Leclerc left with his mother, pascale, after winning the 2017 fia formula 2 championship charles marc hervé perceval leclerc was born on 16 october 1997 in monte carlo, monaco. 이 사람의 아버지대부터 나폴레옹 1세의 정통후예란 걸 강조하기 위함인지 보나파르트가가 아닌 나폴레옹 napoléon가를 칭하고 있으나 보나파르트가의 수장으로서 나폴레옹 공작 prince napoléon을 계승해온 것은 같다. 특히 아버지 에르베 르클레르의 지원은 절대적이었습니다. 4 1988년생이며 현재 모나코에서 부동산 관련 사업을 하고 있으며 동생 아르투르 르클레르를 후원하고 있다.

백만송 터미널 샤를 르클레르는 1997년 7월 3일 아버지 에르베 르클레르hervé leclerc와 어머니 파스칼 르클레르pascale leclerc 사이에서 형 로렌조lorenzo와 동생 아서. 샤를 역시 쥘 비앙키와 어렸을 때부터 친형제처럼 지냈다. 전독시 부유한 밤의 아버지, 박시후 아버지, 플리키뱅 아버지. 12 his father, hervé leclerc, was a racing driver who competed in formula three in the 1980s and 1990s, 3 whilst his mother, pascale leclerc, is a former hairdresser who operated a hair salon in fontvieille. 임종 직전의 아버지에게 거짓말을 했던 f1 드라이버의 결말.

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.