The Trump administration, Russia and China have put global human rights in unprecedented peril, according to Human Rights Watch’s ‘World Report 2026’.

The NGO’s annual stocktake of global human rights says they are “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,” the report says.

“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 re-election.

“The democratic wave that began over 50 years ago has given way to what scholars term a ‘democratic recession’.”

The report says levels of democracy is now back to 1985 levels, with 72 percent of the world’s population now living under autocratic rulers.

And Russia, China and the US are less free today than 20 years ago.

The report says that 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,” it says.

The report says that in just a year, the Trump administration has carried out a broad assault on key pillars of US democracy and the global rules-based order, which the US, with other states, helped to establish.

It says Trump’s second-term administration has undermined trust in elections, reduced government accountability, reduced 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.

And racist tropes have been used 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,” the report says.

“Masked immigration enforcement agents have targeted people of colour, using excessive force, terrorising communities, wrongfully arresting scores of citizens, and, most recently, unjustifiably killing two people in Minneapolis, whose deaths Human Rights Watch has documented,” the report says.

The report asks if the US has switched sides on the human rights playing field?

It says that 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,” the report says.

“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,” the report says.

It identified an international network of countries such as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Myanmar, Cuba, and Belarus work in concert with Russia and China.

The report says 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 endeavour. 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.”

The report identified some major instances of human rights abuse.

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.

Russia’s violations of human rights in Ukraine 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 drones to hunt and kill civilians.

The report says there is an urgent need for a new global alliance to support international human rights within a rules-based order.

It says Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, and the UK and EU could potentially form this alliance.

“Individually, these countries may be easily overwhelmed by the global influence of the US and China. But together, they could become a powerful political force and substantial economic bloc,” the report says.

It says the EU’s obsession with migration has radically shaped its foreign policy, while at home its laws are eroding away the concept of asylum.

“The EU is caving into the floodgates of anti-migrant rhetoric and inaction,” the report says.

In Australia, the poor treatment of refugees, systemic discrimination and racism have tarred Australia’s human rights record, despite freedoms in the nation being largely upheld, the report said.

Racial and ethnic discrimination – including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism – was increasing, as was racism towards Indian and Indigenous communities, the report found.

Read the full report: World Report 2026 | Human Rights Watch