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.

아이돌의 하위 카테고리로는 그라비아 아이돌, 남성을 대상으로 한 치즈케이크 사진의 여성 모델, 주니어 아이돌, 15세 이하 그라비아 모델, av 아이돌, 성인 여성 연예인, 29 인터넷을 통해 인기를 얻은 스타를 뜻하는 넷 아이돌, 아이돌 성우 들, 아이돌 노래. 또한 복면가왕에도 출연해 자신들의 보컬로서의 입지를 다졌다. 일본에는 주니어 그라비아 아이돌 이라고 하는 크레이지한 카테고리가 있습니다. 37 the ticketing were scheduled to be held on two days, on june 23 for fan club presales and on june 25 for general sales.

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전설이 된 프로 아이돌의 결정적 순간, 르세라핌 사쿠라당시 hkt48akb48가 보여준 〈yume de kiss me.. 슈퍼주니어 이번 20주년 기념 정규 12집 슈퍼주니어 이오 super junior25는 데뷔 시점의 마음가짐을 되새기고 계속해서 슈퍼주니어의 이름을 지키겠다는 의미를 담았다..

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슈퍼주니어 super junior는 sm 엔터테인먼트 소속의 대한민국 의 9인조 음악 그룹이다. 그룹 슈퍼주니어가 올해 데뷔 20주년을 맞았다, 8월 15일수 방송되는 mbc에브리원 ‘주간아이돌’에서는 3년 5개월 만에 돌아온 슈퍼주니어 최강 유닛 슈퍼주니어d&e가 출연한다, Majicmix realistic 麦橘写实.

슈퍼주니어 티브이데일리 김한길 기자 그룹 슈퍼주니어super junior가 데뷔 20주년을 맞이했다, 슈주, sj라는 약칭으로 부르기도 한다. 전설이 된 프로 아이돌의 결정적 순간, 르세라핌 사쿠라당시 hkt48akb48가 보여준 〈yume de kiss me. 그룹 슈퍼주니어가 올해 데뷔 20주년을 맞았다, 30 5page 연예가 화제, 방송가요, 영화, 해외연예, 아이돌24시 등 최신 뉴스와 랭킹별 뉴스 제공, Y 는 9인조 남성 그룹 슈퍼주니어 의 메인보컬 라인으로 구성된 발라드 유닛으로 슈퍼주니어 내 최초의 유닛 및 대한민국 최초의 아이돌 유닛이다.

재업 대타로 데뷔한 아이돌이 국민그룹으로 부상, 쟈니스. 슈퍼주니어 이번 20주년 기념 정규 12집 슈퍼주니어 이오 super junior25는 데뷔 시점의 마음가짐을 되새기고 계속해서 슈퍼주니어의 이름을 지키겠다는 의미를 담았다, 일본에는 아역배우와 같은 어린 소녀들이 일찍부터 연예계 활동을 시작한다. 슈주, sj라는 약칭으로 부르기도 한다. 키즈돌 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전.

멤버가 5명인데 3명은 확정이고 2명은 미정이라는 듯. 한류 아이돌 계의 제왕 슈퍼주니어 d&e가 스케치북에 출연했다. 슈퍼주니어는 지난 2005년 1집 슈퍼주니어05 super junior05로 데뷔해 쏘리, 쏘리, 미인아, u 등의 히트곡을 내며 2세대 대표 아이돌 그룹 가운데 하나로 활약했다. 이특이 대한민국 아이돌 그룹의 고령화가 심각하다고 덧붙이자 멤버들은 고령화 주범, 실버타운 가야한다 등의 말로 웃음을 더했다, 37 however, the tickets. 슈주, sj라는 약칭으로 부르기도 한다.

hitomi ahemaru 2015년 11월 1일, 정규 5집 타이틀곡 mr. 전설이 된 프로 아이돌의 결정적 순간, 르세라핌 사쿠라당시 hkt48akb48가 보여준 〈yume de kiss me. 주니어 아이돌로 유명했던 사람들이 커서 배우로 대성공한 케이스죠. 8살짜리가 공연뛰는 일본 아이돌업계 근황_8. 헤이제팬ㅣ일본구매대행, 일본직구, 야후 일본옥션, mercari, 메루카리, 라쿠텐 등 구매대행 및 경매대행을 제공하는 사이트 쇼핑몰입니다. hrvn1015

hollyfansclub twitter 키즈돌 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전. 8월 15일수 방송되는 mbc에브리원 ‘주간아이돌’에서는 3년 5개월 만에 돌아온 슈퍼주니어 최강 유닛 슈퍼주니어d&e가 출연한다. Com › @truevisionsnow › video20년 기념 슈퍼주니어 트루비전스 나우에서 만나요 tiktok. 37 the ticketing were scheduled to be held on two days, on june 23 for fan club presales and on june 25 for general sales. 실제로 2000년대 초반 많은 아이돌 그룹이 재계약을 넘기지 못했다. hitomi reverse rape

hitomi 선배 Majicmix realistic 麦橘写实. 일본에는 주니어 그라비아 아이돌 이라고 하는 크레이지한 카테고리가 있습니다. 대한민국의 보이그룹 아이돌 super junior 의 일본 활동에 대해 서술하는 문서. 일본에는 아역배우와 같은 어린 소녀들이 일찍부터 연예계 활동을 시작한다. 일본에는 아역배우와 같은 어린 소녀들이 일찍부터 연예계 활동을 시작한다. hitomi.la shayo

hitomi 닌자의 성욕 수상이력 2025 mnet asian music awards인스파이어링 어치브먼트 2021 the fact music awards팬앤스타 초이스상 가수read more. 또한 데뷔 전부터 지금까지 18년간 함께 지내온 두 사. 저희 멤버 수 나이만 합쳐도 360살이 된다고 최고령 현역 아이돌 그룹임을 알려 웃음을 자아냈다. 이는 단순한 팀 유지가 아닌 팀 진화’라는 새로운 아이돌 생존 모델을 제시한 사례로 평가받는다. 또한 데뷔 전부터 지금까지 18년간 함께 지내온 두 사.

himari kinoshita namuwiki 주니어 아이돌 1,4, children, 수영장 옆, 클리비지, 펼치기. 전설이 된 프로 아이돌의 결정적 순간, 르세라핌 사쿠라당시 hkt48akb48가 보여준 〈yume de kiss me. 주니어아이돌 dvd 일본야후옥션 일본구매대행 직구. 특히 매달 발매되는 5개의 아이돌지 《myojo》, 《ポポロ》, 《duet》, 《potato》, 《wink up》에는 일부 주니어들이 정기적으로 게재된다. 26년 간의 긴 활동을 마무리하며, 아라시가 활동 종료를 발표했습니다.

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.