The world is in a “democratic recession” with almost three-quarters of the world’s population now living under autocratic rulers – levels not seen since the 1980s, according to a new report.
The system that supports human rights “is in danger”, said Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), with a growing authoritarian wave becoming “the challenge of a generation”, he said.
Speaking ahead of the launch of the human rights watchdog’s annual country-by-country assessment, published on Wednesday, Bolopion said 2025 is a “tipping point” for rights and freedoms in the US. In just 12 months, the Trump administration has implemented a wide-ranging attack on the main pillars of American democracy and the international order based on global rules, which the US, despite the contradictions, helped to build. It is now working in the “opposite direction”, he said.
Citing Donald Trump’s calls for Republicans this week to “nationalize” the US voting system and revelations that a member of an Emirati royal family backed a $500m investment in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, Bolopion said: “Every day you see confirmation of this trend, but when you step back you see an organized, relentless, determined that all the executive power to strike and balance US democracy – a system designed to limit power and protect rights.”
He called on democracies, including the UK, the European Union and Canada, to form a strategic alliance to preserve the rules-based international order, which is under threat from Trump, Russia and China.
The HRW report documents attacks on the rights-based system during Trump’s second term administration. These include undermining trust in the sanctity of elections, reducing government accountability, attacking judicial independence, disobeying court orders, using government power to intimidate political opponents, media, law firms, universities, civil society and even comedians.
Recent abuses, from attacks on freedom of speech to the deportation of people to countries where they may face torture, highlight this attack on the rule of law, the organization said.
Combined with Russia and China’s long-standing efforts to undermine the global rules-based order, the actions of the US administration will have a major impact around the world, Bolopion said, leaving the global human rights system at risk.
“Under the relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump, and continued undermining by China and Russia, the laws based on the international order are being crushed, which threatens to bring down the architecture that human rights defenders rely on to improve norms and protect freedoms,” he said.
“Trump boasts that he does not ‘need international law’ as a deterrent, his ‘own morality’,” Bolopion warned.
HRW also reported on the UK, finding that the British government “repeatedly undermined” the rights of 2025.
The Labor government’s punitive approach to immigration has played a “significant role” in making the anti-migrant rhetoric that has fueled the far-right more part of the mainstream debate, it said. The human rights organization has criticized the UK’s authoritarian crackdown on the right to protest and a failure to adequately respond to the worsening cost of living crisis.
Anti-migrant rhetoric is a “dangerous trend for human rights in the UK, but also [in] France and Germany and other European counties”, Bolopion said, adding that Trump encouraged this by claiming that Europe was threatened with “civilisational erasure”.
This “democratic recession” predates Trump and began decades ago, the report found. Democracy is now back to 1985 levels, with 72% of the world’s population now living under autocracy. Along with undermining the rules-based order, it presents a “perfect storm” for human rights and freedoms around the world, HRW said.
The introduction to the report states: “Russia and China are less free today than they were 20 years ago. And so is the United States.”
An alliance of rights-based democracies can be a “powerful force” and a “large economic bloc”, offering incentives to oppose policies that undermine multilateral trade management and human rights, said Bolopion, adding that such an alliance would be a powerful UN voting bloc.
Civil society work is also important in this “dangerous new world”, he said. “This is a challenging time but one for action, not for despair.”
There is hope, he said, citing public anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good last month by federal immigration officials, protests in Iran, which began after a sharp fall in the value of Iran’s currency but grew to include calls for political change, to Gen Z protests in Morocco over inadequate health care and education.