Rights attacks 'fuelled by Trump term'

THE global system of law and human rights is under threat from a “multiplicity of assaults” which have accelerated since US President Donald Trump’s return to power, Amnesty International said yesterday in its annual report.

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“Unprecedented forces are hunting down the ideals of human rights for all, seeking to destroy an international system forged in the blood and grief of World War Two and its Holocaust,” said the rights group’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard.

The lives of millions of people had been “devastated” in 2024 as a result of conflicts and abuses committed in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine and Afghanistan where women’s freedoms continue to be curtailed.

The report singled out some of the world’s biggest powers such as the US, Russia and China for “undermining” the achievements of international law, as well as the fight against poverty and discrimination.

While these “reckless and punishing offensives” had been under way for several years, according to Amnesty, Trump had served as a “super-accelerator” of those trends.

The new administration has frozen US international aid and reduced its funding to several UN organisations.