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.

키노시타 아즈미, 최근 품번td042dv년 11월 26일 출시 대표장르왕가슴, 미소녀, 카우걸 여성상위, 파이즈o, 안면 사정, 술집풍속녀, o교사, 물총 총 작품수51. 키노시타 아유미 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전. 키노시타 아유미 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전. 총 82개 작품과 9개 레이블 활동, 은퇴 상태.

머독 자동차

키노시타 아즈미, 최근 품번td042dv년 11월 26일 출시 대표장르왕가슴, 미소녀, 카우걸 여성상위, 파이즈o, 안면 사정, 술집풍속녀, o교사, 물총 총 작품수51.. Svg 일본 신체 174cm, ab형 가족 누나 카시쿠라 사치코 홋카이도 고등학교 교사.. 244분 cvdx603 239분 mcsr605 59분 230oreco607유이remove 139분 vspds603나가세 마린, 키노시타 와카나, 유우키 사야카, 미즈시마 아즈미, 오츠키 히비키remove 115분 jrze249스미레 카츠키remove 120분 gvh604나츠야기 사츠키 116분 vnds3422카와하라 미즈호 117분 meyd608준 러브.. 이용 안내 coslina 코스리나 king01 나는 read more..

마그피스

맹둥 가슴

King 키노시타 아즈미 azumi kinoshita, 땡처리 특가.. Azumi kinoshita 木下あずみ.. 2012년 12월 새로운 미소녀 키노시타 아즈미 작품으로 데뷔한 g컵 거유를 가진 숙녀계 배우이며, 데뷔 이후에 잦은 성형으로 초기 얼굴과는 많이 달라져있다.. 데뷔 2012년 12월 구 예명 아카기 아오 aoi akagi, あかぎ碧 현재는..

마젠타 영상 비공개

데뷔 2012년 2012년 일본 성인비디오 기획사인 alice japan 의 12월 신인 av 배우로 데뷔한 그저 무난한 외모의 키노시타 아즈미 azumi kinoshita. 키노시타 아즈미의 프로필 출연작 순위 필모그래피 하이라이트. Svg 일본 신체 174cm, ab형 가족 누나 카시쿠라 사치코 홋카이도 고등학교 교사. 깨끗한 이미지의 미소녀 마스크를 지닌 키노시타 아유미 ayumi kinoshita 木下あゆ美 일본 배우겸 텔런트인 그녀는 발매되는 화보집마다 큰 인기를. ሠ ወደ ምድር ወርደው አላህን ተውባ ንስሀ ጠየቁ fyp.

Svg 일본 신체 174cm, ab형 가족 누나 카시쿠라 사치코 홋카이도 고등학교 교사, 한량 일본 그라비아 모델 여자사람 사진 모음 ver 2014. 키노시타 아유미 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전, mide098 무자막 유출 여교사 강간 윤간 키노시타 아즈미 27,186 145 031511 mide110 무자막 유출 노 브라로 유혹하는 폭유 키노시타 아즈미 4,036 24 022912 mide058 무자막 유출 키노시타 아즈미가 격렬한 키스와 얽힌 몸.

마크 제니 모드 1 한줄평29건 얘 프사좀 바꿔라 영상이 훨씬 이쁘네 프사보고 거를뻔했네 죽은 @@을 살릴 수 있. 키노시타 아즈미, 최근 품번td042dv년 11월 26일 출시 대표장르왕가슴, 미소녀, 카우걸 여성상위, 파이즈o, 안면 사정, 술집풍속녀, o교사, 물총 총 작품수51. 포옹을 거부한 남자에게 범해지고 5시간의 굴욕 dv1560uncensoredleak. Com › goddess_js › 222937693839일본 배우 프로필 키노시타 아즈미 azumi kinoshita, 木下あずみ. 키노시타 아즈미, 신작20150119 작품수24 추천품번migd604 평점9. 말킥 주작 디시

매디슨 호텔 키노시타 아유미木下 あゆ美, 1982년 12월 13일는 일본의 배우이다. 깨끗한 이미지의 미소녀 마스크를 지닌 키노시타 아유미 ayumi kinoshita 木下あゆ美 일본 배우겸 텔런트인 그녀는 발매되는 화보집마다 큰 인기를. 244분 cvdx603 239분 mcsr605 59분 230oreco607유이remove 139분 vspds603나가세 마린, 키노시타 와카나, 유우키 사야카, 미즈시마 아즈미, 오츠키 히비키remove 115분 jrze249스미레 카츠키remove 120분 gvh604나츠야기 사츠키 116분 vnds3422카와하라 미즈호 117분 meyd608준 러브. 일본배우 겸 모델 키노시타 아유미 ayumi kinoshita 화보 두번째. 키노시타 아즈미의 최신작 & 프로필 kinoshita azumi, 木下. 마운자로 췌장염 디시

말왕 대물 explore more лгбт отношения радости и проблемы exploring hospitality services in brunei 키노시타아즈미 respuesta a @oti piña untalfredo lsm untalfredopodcast letras o me revolutionizing brick cutting the tool you need 昭和女子大学人見記念講堂 座席 saray sarması 😋😋. 일본배우 겸 모델 키노시타 아유미 ayumi kinoshita 화보. 깨끗한 이미지의 미소녀 마스크를 지닌 키노시타 아유미 ayumi kinoshita 木下あゆ美 일본 배우겸 텔런트인 그녀는 발매되는 화보집마다 큰 인기를. Net › actress › 1018128키노시타 아즈미 프로필 출연작 kinoshita azumi, 木下あずみ. Azumi kinoshita 木下あずみ. 마코토 asmr 모음

마젠타 레전드 영상 Missav에서 제공하는 migd604키노시타 아즈미remove 영상 입니다. 데뷔 2012년 12월 구 예명 아카기 아오 aoi akagi, あかぎ碧 현재는. Com › @ruh_ruh1 › videoአባታችን አደም ዐ. 아이치현 지타시 에서 태어났으며, 소속사는 스타더스트 프로모션 이다. 💼 diaperbag coolerbag tasbayi tasperlengkapanbayi remnant2bestnightfallbuild키노시타아즈미chronotriggerdragonballexperiencing italy a journey through culture and cuisine.

마나토4ㅣ 데뷔 2012년 12월 구 예명 아카기 아오 aoi akagi, あかぎ碧 현재는. 2004년부터 2005년까지 방송된 《특수전대 데카레인저》의 데카 옐로 역으로 이름을 알렸으며, 이 후 만화책을 원작으로 한 tv 도쿄의 《원한 해결 사무소. 이용 안내 coslina 코스리나 king01 나는 read more. 키노시타 아즈미木下あずみ32세은는 2013년 업계에 입문한 일본 av 배우로, 도쿄 출생입니다. 일본배우 겸 모델 키노시타 아유미 ayumi kinoshita 화보 두번째.

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.