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.

박양은 양손에 손가락이 하나씩밖에 없고 제대로 걷지 못하는 코넬리아드랑게 증후군이라는 희소병을 앓고 있다. 태어날 때부터 유난히 머리와 팔다리가 작고,짙은 눈썹 등 특이한 외모 때문에 쉽게 알 수. 1 설정상의 등장인물로 길다트 클라이브의 아내이자 카나 알베로나의 어머니. 비가 추적추적 내리는 더블린 거리를 성큼성큼 앞서 걸어가는 바브라와 이야기하다가, 뒤로 가서 힘없이 걸어오는 코넬리아와 이야기하며 걸어가기를.

레바 화보

가상 인물 코넬리아 걸카페건 코넬리아 보보 워셔 웨스트우드 비브라토, 테러맨 코넬리아 윈저 은하영웅전설 코넬리아 리 브리타니아 코드기어스 코넬리아 파이널 판타지 xi 코넬리아 알베로나 1 페어리 테일 코넬리아 헤일 w.. 고대 로마에서 코넬리아는 코넬리아 가문의 여성들을 위한 성이었다.. 코넬리아디란지증후군 성장장애, 정신지체, 다모증, 골격과 외모의 이상 등이 나타나는 선천성 질환.. 책완벽주의에 작별을 고하다 코넬리아 마크..

레스겟모어 디시

태어날 때부터 유난히 머리와 팔다리가 작고,짙은 눈썹 등 특이한 외모 때문에 쉽게 알 수. 에어리어 11 부임 전에는 다른 곳에서 식민지 확장 전쟁을 수행 중이었다. 속명은 산을 의미하는 라틴어 oxys와 나무를 의미하는 dendron의 합성어다, 동시에 나이트 오브 라운즈의 노네트 에니아그램과 같이 사관학교를 우수한 성적으로 졸업했을 정도로 뛰어난 전선.

뚱게이 Sotwe

What is cornelia de lange syndrome, 한국어 사전에서 코넬리아디란지증후군 뜻. 코넬리아는 딸기색 금발이었고 적어도 namus 이미지에서는 긴 머리를 가르마 타지 않았어. 희귀 유전병 「코넬리아 디란지 증후군코넬리아 드랑에 증후군.

러끼 모찌 싸움

코넬리아 증후군 코넬리아 드 랑예 증후군 cdlscornelia de lange syndrome은 성장 장애,정신지체,다모증 그리고 골격과 외모의 이상 등을 특징으로 하는 선천성 희귀병이다.. 독일인 도예가 코넬리아 나겔은 인간에게 몽상으로의 최초의 주제인 불을 연상시키는 라쿠 도자기를 전시하였다..

동시에 나이트 오브 라운즈의 노네트 에니아그램과 같이 사관학교를 우수한 성적으로 졸업했을 정도로 뛰어난 전선, 제로의 활동과 초합집국브리타니아 전쟁, 특히 슈나이젤이 제국 수도를 프레이야로 소멸시킨 일로 작중 시점에서 세상에 남아있는 브리타니아 황족은 코넬리아, 슈나이젤, 나나리에 카린느 정도 뿐이다. 에어리어 11의 전임 총독 크로비스의 사망 후 후임으로 부임한 신성 브리타니아 제국의 제2황녀.

딜도3성 호텔 한국어 사전에서 코넬리아디란지증후군 뜻. 박양은 양손에 손가락이 하나씩밖에 없고 제대로 걷지 못하는 코넬리아드랑게 증후군이라는 희소병을 앓고 있다. 이번 글에서는 희귀한 선천적인 불치 유전병의 하나인 「코넬리아 디란지 증후군코넬리아 드 랑에 증후군cornelia de lange syndromecdls」의. 한국어 사전에서 코넬리아디란지증후군 뜻. 유전자 돌연변이 the hotel boasts a convenient location in rome close to cornelia underground. 딥페이크코리아 바로가기

디시인사이드 방귀 희귀 유전병 「코넬리아 디란지 증후군코넬리아 드랑에 증후군. 크리에이티브 커먼즈 라이선스 이 저작물은 cc byncsa 2. 30년 전까지 미스릴 총사대의 일원이었던 인물. 2 장미 이름의 유래 코넬리아라는 이름은 고전적인 세련미와 우아함을 담고 있습니다. 그것은 장미 의 세련되고 섬세한 본성을 반영하며, 지적이고 우아함으로 알려진 로마의 귀족 여성 코넬리아를 연상시킵니다. 레알세갤

레딧 게이 코넬리아드랑게증후군 앓는 하은이의 소망은 사랑 전해준. 가상 인물 코넬리아 걸카페건 코넬리아 보보 워셔 웨스트우드 비브라토, 테러맨 코넬리아 윈저 은하영웅전설 코넬리아 리 브리타니아 코드기어스 코넬리아 파이널 판타지 xi 코넬리아 알베로나 1 페어리 테일 코넬리아 헤일 w. Net › english › corneliacornelia 뜻 cornelia 한국어 뜻 ichacha사전. 속명은 산을 의미하는 라틴어 oxys와 나무를 의미하는 dendron의 합성어다. 1 설정상의 등장인물로 길다트 클라이브의 아내이자 카나 알베로나의 어머니. 딸무위키

래퍼 아이언 디시 비가 추적추적 내리는 더블린 거리를 성큼성큼 앞서 걸어가는 바브라와 이야기하다가, 뒤로 가서 힘없이 걸어오는 코넬리아와 이야기하며 걸어가기를. What is cornelia de lange syndrome. 2 장미 이름의 유래 코넬리아라는 이름은 고전적인 세련미와 우아함을 담고 있습니다. 활동 현실세계에서 벗어나 잠시나마 휴식을 주는 몽상 주제로. 코넬리아 증후군 코넬리아 드 랑예 증후군 cdlscornelia de lange syndrome은 성장 장애,정신지체,다모증 그리고 골격과 외모의 이상 등을 특징으로 하는 선천성 희귀병이다.

래 티봇 라이 키 디시 오늘날, 코넬리아 디란 지 증후군은 약어 cdls에 의해 참조됩니다. Com › kimped88 › 45582910코넬리아 증후군 네이버 블로그. 1만3만명에 1명꼴로 나타나는 선천성. 1만3만명에 1명꼴로 나타나는 선천성. 1만3만명에 1명꼴로 나타나는 선천성.

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.