The erosion of human rights: A 2025 perspective

YEAR IN REVIEW

- PAULO CÉSAR CARBONARI

THE High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in his report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council last September, stated that “no one is safe when human rights are attacked”.

He was referring to the growing disregard for the multilateral agreements that have constituted International Human Rights Law and, with it, the impunity for those who commit such acts, which makes everything even more serious. This concern highlights a dynamic that underscores one of the central themes of an assessment of the human rights situation in 2025.

The growing weakening of multilateralism and global human rights protection mechanisms is not new, but it certainly gained momentum in 2025. One of the main factors contributing to this is the attacks by the leading Western military power against international organisations and its withdrawal or threat of withdrawal from several of these mechanisms.

Trump's new term fosters this kind of deepening. Added to this is the position of other autocrats around the world, in the East and the West, in the North and the South. The main result of all this is leaving those who are most vulnerable even more vulnerable, abandoned and at risk of death. Humanity is at even greater risk and even more unprotected.

The publication of the National Security Strategy of the US is the ultimate expression of what advocates the end of the “rule of law” in multilateralism, the sabotage of what stems from it, and the praise for the “rule of the mightiest”.

Interestingly, it does not refer to human rights (at least not explicitly) in the document, but to the “Godgiven natural rights of its citizens”, as appears at various points. Besides reenacting the Monroe Doctrine for the Americas (“The United States will reaffirm and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”), it re-enacts US imperialism in a new context.