Unceasing attacks came from governments, including the most powerful, as well as from the private sector and non-state groups, pushing agendas in opposition to human rights. Many of these assaults are amped up by technology, with the methods and means becoming ever cheaper and ever more accessible to the masses.

An annual analysis from the Dublin-based international rights group Frontline Defenders paints a devastating picture of killings, arbitrary detention, surveillance, and harassment. CIVICUS, an organization that measures civic space (defined as “the respect in policy, law and practice for freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly and the extent to which states protect these fundamental rights”), documented declines in 15 countries and improvements in only three. The location and nature of the drops were diverse, taking place from mature democracies such as the United States, Germany, France, and Switzerland, to authoritarian regimes such as Burundi and Oman, and including countries in crisis and conflict such as Sudan and Israel. Some types of human rights were uniquely politicized and singled out in 2025, including women’s rights and environmental rights. Freedom House recorded the 19th straight year of declines in global freedom.

All this is compounded by an unprecedented slash-and-burn to international aid budgets for organizations and individuals working on human rights worldwide. The Human Rights Funders Network of almost 450 institutions across 70 countries estimates that by 2026, human rights funding globally will experience a $1.9 billion reduction compared to levels in 2023.

Taken together, this makes the world more dangerous than ever for human rights defenders and they have fewer resources at their disposal to combat the threats.

In 2026 and moving forward, two crucial questions arise for the defense of human rights globally. First, who will do the work of fighting to protect and advance human rights in the year ahead, and second, how can those in the international community still fiercely committed to human rights support them? These questions will be shadowed by another trend: impunity. Yet, at the same time, lessons and a few positive developments from 2025 can guide human rights defenders on how to seize opportunities in the coming year, beginning even this month at the United Nations.

The Earthquakes of 2025

Eviscerating Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Assistance

In the United States, 2025 began with the newly inaugurated Trump administration dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and canceling approximately 85 percent of its programming (from a budget of more than $35 billion in the fiscal year ending in September 2024). The gutting eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars of support for those working to protect human rights and expand freedom and democracy around the world. The State Department’s grantmaking efforts were similarly cut, with more than half of its awards canceled, including programs directly supporting human rights defenders such as one initiative providing emergency financial assistance to civil society organizations and a fund to promote human rights and democracy and respond to related crises.

Most other major donor countries followed suit, though not with the same sweep or to nearly the same degree. Canada said it would reduce foreign aid by $2.7 billion over the next four years, the Dutch announced structural spending cuts of € 2.4 billion on development aid starting in 2027, and the European Union announced a €2 billion reduction in its main mechanism for development aid for 2025-2027. Multilateral funders were not immune to the trend: the United Nations, for one, will see major budget and staffing cuts for human rights in 2026.

The U.S. retreat from foreign assistance rapidly impacted all development sectors, from health, to education, to humanitarian assistance, but no sector was targeted with such enmity as that of democracy, human rights, and governance. Advocates and implementers saw not only the dire resource clawbacks discussed above, but also found themselves tarred by a steady diet of derisive commentary from the very policymakers doing the cutting.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, once championed human rights and democracy “activists” as a U.S. Senator, even serving on the board of the democracy-promoting International Republican Institute before the administration eliminated the congressional funding that supported it. He once told a crowd at the Brookings Institution “[f]oreign aid is a very cost-effective way, not only to export our values and our example, but to advance our security and our economic interests.”

But as secretary of state, he abruptly reversed course, writing last April that the State Department unit overseeing civilian security, human rights, and democracy had “a bloated budget and unclear mandate,” and that its “Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor had become a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against `anti-woke’ leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary.” Other members of the administration were similarly sharp-tongued about the sector, with now-former USAID Administrator Pete Marocco conflating the promotion of “civic society” with “regime change” in official court documents and President Donald Trump himself referring to USAID’s leadership as “radical lunatics.”

The rhetoric mirrors similar language used by authoritarians across the globe who have long been opposed to foreign assistance for democracy, human rights, and governance work, and it has real-world consequences for those advocating for human rights and freedom. Leaders of multiple countries have seized on the words of the Trump administration to launch spurious investigations of human rights defenders and other civil society activists who had received U.S. funding.

Closing Civic Space and New Technology

Closing civic space is not a new threat to human rights defenders, but it is one that has reached a fevered pitch in the last few years. This has included both an increase in traditional attacks and a greater reliance on new tactics for suppression, especially in the digital sphere.

Nearly 45 percent of all civic space violations CIVICUS recorded for its annual analysis were related to the freedom of expression. The organization documented more than 900 violations of the right to peaceful assembly and more than 800 violations of freedom of association. The most frequent examples were detentions of protesters and journalists, followed by the detention of human rights defenders outside the context of a protest or journalism, merely for doing their work.

Authoritarian regimes also have become ever more adept at utilizing the digital space for repression. Tactics such as doxing, censorship, smearing, and online harassment are important tools in an authoritarian approach. They have been supplemented in recent years by less evident tactics such as shadow-banning, which the CIVICUS analysis defined as when “a platform restricts content visibility without notifying the user,” allowing the platform to maintain an appearance that it is neutral.

Women rights defenders face additional risks online, including technology-facilitated gender-based violence: In a global survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, 38 percent of women reported personal experience with violence online, from hacking and stalking to image-based sexual abuse.

Attacks in the digital space often are also connected with or fuel physical attacks, “including killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and harassment,” as Frontline Defenders reported in its analysis. Tunisia is paradigmatic. Amnesty International reported that, beginning in 2024, a “wave of arrests followed a large-scale online campaign…which saw homophobic and transphobic hate speech and discriminatory rhetoric against LGBTI activists and organizations spreading across hundreds of social media pages, including those espousing support for the Tunisian President Kais Said. Traditional media outlets also broadcast inflammatory messages by popular TV and radio hosts attacking LGBTI organizations, calling for their dissolution and for the arrests of LGBTI activists.” 

What to Expect for Human Rights in 2026 

The absence of meaningful and unified international pushback to human rights abuses by some of the world’s most powerful nations means the rights-based international system will continue to face unprecedented attacks, and the challenges that rights defenders face in the year ahead are likely to increase in number and intensity. Authoritarians worldwide have monitored the assault against human rights in the past year — from genocide in Gaza to the crackdowns on protesters in Tanzania to restrictions on freedom of association and expression in El Salvador and so many more instances — and they have learned that they are unlikely to be held accountable internationally in the near term.

Yet despite these challenges, a few developments in 2025 offer some reasons for optimism in the year ahead. Several large-scale, youth-led movements in 2025 held their governments accountable for rights violations, from the July Revolution in Bangladesh that ousted an abusive prime minister to the Gen Z protests in Kenya over economic conditions and government corruption, a protest moniker that spread to other countries as well.

Some governments passed rights-protecting laws, from Thailand’s legalization of same-sex marriage to Colombia’s laws preventing child marriage. Courts stood up for human rights and held perpetrators to account, from the International Criminal Court’s conviction of Sudan’s Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman for war crimes and crimes against humanity to the U.S. conviction of The Gambia’s Michael Saang Correa for torture, to the symbolic judgment of the People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan. These trends are likely to continue in 2026, despite the challenges, because courageous human rights defenders are using every avenue to fight for rights.

This year will also bring targeted opportunities to continue the fight for human rights. A preparatory committee for a proposed international crimes against humanity treaty begins work this month at the United Nations. Also at the U.N., this year’s Universal Periodic Reviews, a regular peer review of countries’ human rights records, will focus on some of the world’s worst rights offenders — including Sudan, Eswatini, and Rwanda — as well as countries with highly mixed records. These reviews provide an opportunity for the world to examine, publicly and critically, the rights records of all 193 countries and for victims and activists to share their stories and insights. While the United States has not submitted its self-evaluation due late last year, the process continued with the usual submissions from the U.N. and others.

Creative activists also are likely to use prominent events, such as the 2026 Olympic Games, to push for the expansion and recognition of human rights. They can take the opportunity of the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations to highlight and internationalize the country’s founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the requirement that all governments “[derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Who Will Lead the Fight for Human Rights in 2026? 

As many governments pull back and even attack human rights, the work of human rights defenders and organizations will become more critical than ever. Some of them have been leading the fight for decades, including leading international NGOs, national organizations, networks, and prominent individual leaders. Others have done critical human rights work but haven’t labeled themselves as rights defenders, such as organizations providing access to clean water, supporting girls’ education, or working to prevent violent conflict.

Many work at the community level, alongside neighbors and friends, with human rights defenders networks around the world, from the Mozambique Human Rights Defenders Network to Somos Defensores in Colombia. Some are in exile, fighting for rights in their home countries and for refugee and diaspora communities, like the brave Afghan women who organized a landmark People’s Tribunal in 2025 to expose rights violations against women. Others are professionals whose skills directly relate to human rights — lawyers, judges, journalists, and more. They include people like the brave journalists who continue to report on the context in Gaza, despite the incredible risks, and the Burmese lawyers who continue to document rights violations. Some are individual activists, using their platforms and skills to protect rights and call attention to attacks against them, like Iranian Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi who was recently detained alongside other rights defenders while attending a memorial service for a human rights lawyer. Some are informal coalitions, student and youth groups, or protest participants — social movements have been and will be an essential component of the fight for human rights. All of these actors play a critical role in the human rights ecosystem. All of them are human rights defenders.

Aid funding cuts have devastated civil society organizations and will continue to impact human rights advocates. A survey by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and International IDEA of 125 civil society organizations based in 42 countries found that 84 percent of respondents had lost funding due to U.S. and other countries’ aid cuts, with the same number expecting further cuts in 2026. UN Women reported that more than one in three women’s rights and civil society organizations have suspended or shut down programs to end violence against women and girls and more than 40 percent have scaled back or closed life-saving services. The philanthropic organization Humanity United found that 44 percent of peacebuilding organizations that it surveyed would run out of funds by the end of 2025.

These cuts will only be amplified as time goes on, as fewer young people can become human rights professionals while managing to put food on the table, as legal cases that take years to process aren’t filed for lack of funding, as human rights abuses aren’t documented, as the attacks from authoritarian regimes go unchecked. Shrinking development budgets will no longer provide similar levels of support to courts and anti-corruption bodies that human rights defenders have traditionally approached to pursue justice or for support hotlines where ordinary people can call in anonymously to report abuses at the hands of security forces. Such foreign assistance enabled vital avenues of accountability, but also signified solidarity, that at least some political decisionmakers both at home and abroad believed in human rights and supported those working to deepen and protect them.

But despite the myriad challenges, there will be human rights defenders who continue to fight the fight. For many, changes in funding or the withdrawal of political top-cover won’t stop them from finding avenues. One need only look at Iran’s protests today, where thousands of people are exercising and demanding their human rights amidst a brutal crackdown, internet blackout, and without international funding. Rights defenders have been doing a lot with a little for many years. Some — especially women, youth, Indigenous people, and disabled defenders — have often been excluded from human rights funding and support in the past. A new generation has seen the horrors of Gaza, El-Fasher, eastern Ukraine, or even around the corner from their home, in the news and online, and they have committed themselves to social justice and the prevention of atrocities.

Human rights has always been a universal endeavor which has required diverse supporters, advocates, and allies – this is true now more than ever.

How Can the International Community Support? 

Even those governments and institutions that continue to lead in supporting human rights internationally will need to do more with less, as the above-outlined cuts exemplify, to support those on the front lines. This is the chance to shift “localization” – the practice of funding local civil society organizations directly and based on their priorities, rather than via large overhead-requiring NGOs funded by donor countries — from an ideal to a necessary strategy. A grant of $20,000 may not keep a major international organization online, but it can fund a community-based service provider. Donors can integrate a rights-based approach across portfolios instead of siloing the issue, integrating human rights goals and strategies into other foreign policy initiatives. For example, companies can integrate human rights efforts and measurements into their supply chains for products from batteries to chocolate, producing products they would already produce but in a way that advances human rights as well. Military operations can add human rights and gender considerations with little cost but potentially huge impact. This requires training, tools, and high-level political will to succeed. And they can continue to advocate for rights and use diplomatic pressure and support as key tools.

The elephant in the room is the United States. The Trump administration not only is backtracking on the traditional U.S. commitment and values of democracy and human rights internally and internationally but also has sought to hamper others in funding such initiatives. But there are still important steps that can be taken to protect human rights. Congress must do its job and provide oversight, holding the administration accountable to the laws that protect this important work. Members should speak out against injustices and rights violations, at home and abroad. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), for example, has played a key role in the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, calling out rights abuses in places like Turkey, and Rep. Tim Kennedy (D-NY) led a congressional letter to the Department of Homeland Security urging the Trump administration to overturn its decision to terminate Temporary Protective Status for Burmese people.  State governments have always played a key role in advancing rights, and this will become more critical than ever.

Foreign governments that have engaged on human rights issues but haven’t been the largest international donors or advocates will be particularly important. Some of them are stepping up already. Examples include Japan playing a leading role in advancing women’s issues, South Africa and Gambia taking cases to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel and Myanmar, respectively, of violating the Genocide Convention, and Ireland continuing its steadfast allyship with human rights defenders.

Now is the time for committed countries around the world to continue to demonstrate the global nature of this agenda, set out more than 75 years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reinvigorated by 18 international human rights treaties.

Philanthropy and the international private sector will be more essential than ever in 2026.  Foundations cannot offset the huge funding gaps left by governments and multilateral donors — total U.S. philanthropic giving is about $6 billion per year, whereas U.S. overseas development assistance alone in 2023 accounted for $223 billion — but they can provide strategic investments that help protect rights and those defending them, amplify their voices, fund innovative new approaches, and help the ecosystem survive. Philanthropies around the world provided nearly $5 billion in human rights support globally in 2020 alone, and their funding is critical for many organizations.

Companies have their own role to play, one that includes but goes well beyond corporate social responsibility, from responsible tech and AI to eliminating forced labor from supply chains to hiring diverse employees. The private sector has a unique opportunity to ensure that human rights remain on the global agenda, because there is a strong business case in favor of human rights protections and alliances with those who truly understand the needs and wants of local populations. A great example is the effort by numerous auto and electronics companies to move away from cobalt batteries, both a recognition of the horrible rights violations facing individuals and communities around cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a recognition that this move is also better for business due to supply chain volatility.

Defending against challenges to human rights, democracy, and good governance in 2026 and beyond will require creativity and broad coalition-building across sectors that too often are siloed, such as health, peacebuilding, humanitarian assistance, and the field of democracy, human rights, and governance. Everyone who does not traditionally think of themselves as a human rights defender, from government officials to the private sector, will need to step up to support those on the frontlines of the fight to defend human rights.

The post Who Will Stand Up for Human Rights in 2026 – and How? appeared first on Just Security.

However, there is also hope. After nearly fourteen years, Syrian rebels recently removed one of the world’s most tyrannical regimes from power, calling for respect for minority rights and inclusive, democratic leadership. South Korean civil society and politicians rallied, in just a few hours in the middle of the night, to protect their democracy, thwarting a potential power grab. Gambia and Liberia made long-awaited progress on accountability by forming courts that would examine terrible crimes of their past.

Within this context, the task of those working for international human rights is expansive. These are a few areas to watch in 2025:

DEMOCRACY

Potentially Shifting Positions on Democracy and Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy

Perhaps the closest watched element of democracy and human rights in the coming year is Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term on January 20.

The Biden administration had an inconsistent record on democracy and human rights promotion, with often varied responses depending on geography and political realities, but democracy and human rights were a stated centerpiece of the administration’s foreign policy. This included two Democracy Summits, the creation of two initiatives on strengthening democracy abroad, and a near doubling of the budgetary request for democracy, rights and governance support from the final year of the first Trump administration.

How the second Trump administration handles democracy and human rights promotion will be a key issue for the coming year. President Trump has a mixed record, often being accused of favoring the company and approach of autocrats and taking a transactional approach to foreign policy. Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has a long history with foreign policy, including democracy and human rights promotion, and has been vocal in his support for human rights in his previous role with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), in particular in the PRC and amongst left-leaning countries in Latin America. He was also a co-sponsor of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the Senate, a key tool in fighting forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.

In addition to administration priorities, Congressional power of the purse could have a significant impact on democracy and human rights promotion in the incoming administration. Congress has long provided substantial bipartisan support for democracy promotion through the appropriation process, often directing funds for specific democracy and human rights related goals under the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) budgetary process. This approach was common under the first Trump administration to increase support for democracy and human rights promotion despite disinterest from the White House. Congress also provides appropriations for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is an independent foundation and thus outside the direct control of administration priorities. Whether Congress opts to use this power to contradict a Trump administration and whether that leads to greater or lesser support for democracy and human rights promotion, remains to be seen.

Democratic Backsliding and Authoritarian Networks

According to Freedom House, 2024 marked the 18th consecutive year the world has seen a decline in collective democratic freedoms. Over the previous year, freedom declined for 22% of the world’s population. The reasons for this decline are diverse, including many on this list such as conflict, flawed elections and coups, increased digital repression and internet shutdowns. Collectively, these factors have resulted in a difficult atmosphere for human rights in much of the world.

This level of antidemocratic success has emboldened dictators and authoritarians and fostered an environment of cross learning and support amongst repressive governments. We are currently seeing North Korean troops and a wide array of Chinese technology alongside Iranian-made drones play a role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is but one example of many.

Key questions for 2025 will be whether the nearly two-decade trend of democratic backsliding continues, how authoritarians continue to align and collaborate, and how democratic governments, civil society actors, and ordinary individuals respond to these trends. As there is greater cross-learning amongst authoritarian actors, tactics for combatting authoritarianism learned in one area of the globe will be ever more relevant in others. Whether similar coalitions are made across these forces will be of tremendous interest in 2025 and beyond.

Authoritarian Adoption of the Language of Democracy and Human Rights

Rather than embracing the narrative of a less-free world and advocating against democracy and human rights, over the last several years authoritarian regimes have worked to take the mantle and redefine democracy and human rights to their own ends. In a joint statement from the PRC and Russia in 2022, the countries stated: “It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one,” and note that “Russia and China guarantee their people the right to take part through various means and in various forms in the administration of the State and public life in accordance with the law. The people of both countries are certain of the way they have chosen and respect the democratic systems and traditions of other States.” These countries have increasingly leveraged this language in an attempt to discredit their adversaries, including the United States, in multilateral fora. They have also advocated for multistakeholder fora that broaden the tent of entities that should be involved in global norm-setting, but do so in a voluntary manner, degrading the responsibilities of States and sidestepping the requirements States have to respect human rights as a matter of obligation.

This points to the continued value and power of democracy and human rights as concepts, even if they are in increasingly short supply. Polling data bears out both of these perceptions, that democracy is still extremely important to individuals the world over, and even those in democratic countries are concerned about how it is functioning. With this in mind, authoritarian governments are likely to continue to try to repurpose the language of democracy and human rights for their own ends. Should such States opt to abandon this language, casting such framing aside, it would point to a belief that democratic principles are no longer relevant in international discourse, perhaps an even more troubling development.

Continuous Demand for Democracy

While democracy and human rights have been in retreat for nearly two decades, democracy is still in demand. In the 2024 U.S. election, exit polls indicated a fear for democracy as the most important major issue amongst those polled. 73% of those polled believed U.S. democracy is threatened, with that number split nearly evenly between democrats and republicans. Afrobarometer demonstrates high levels of support for democracy across 39 African countries surveyed, as well as a wide rejection of other types of rule including by one-man, one-party, or the military. Similarly high levels of support for democracy has been found in other regions including Latin America and the Arab World.

Despite high demand, there is also widespread concern that democracy is not working for many individuals. This is reflected both in polling data and in the success opposition parties had globally in the 2024 “year of elections,” in which voters roundly threw out incumbent parties seen as not delivering, but did so without throwing out the democratic system writ large. Citizen desire for democracy is among the greatest guardrails against democratic backsliding. If 2025 sees demand falter, or if continually declining levels of freedom create apathy, both authoritarians and would-be authoritarians may be further emboldened.

CONFLICT AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Conflict-Related Human Rights Violations

2024 was the deadliest on record for global conflicts, with 233,000 people killed over the course of the year, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event (ACLED) data. A startling 1 in 8 people were within 5km of conflict around the globe. This number has grown by 30% in the last year, which is likely an underestimate, given the lack of data surrounding conflicts such as Sudan, and it appears only set to increase. Conflict areas of escalation to watch include Ukraine, Colombia, Mexico, the Sahel, Sudan, the Great Lakes region, Gaza, and the West Bank, with uncertainty looming in the broader Middle East as Syria embarks on a new chapter of governance and Lebanon and Israel maintains their recent ceasefire.

One trend driving these increases is changes in the way that warfare is conducted, both tactically and in the erosion of respect for international norms. Bombing is increasingly used as a tactic, with some estimates placing an increase in the use of this method as high as 300 percent over the past five years. The use of explosive weapons in populated areas leads to wider civilian casualties, which is why the United States and more than 80 countries endorsed a voluntary political declaration in 2022, setting new international standards that aim to minimize civilian harm from this practice. Yet, the declaration is non-binding, and the United States and other States who signed it continue to provide arms to States using this tactic in populated areas.

Sexual and gender-based violence, starvation as a weapon of war, and a widespread lack of respect for international humanitarian law that has caused historic levels of deaths of humanitarian aid workers, journalists, and health workers are all on the rise, and are relevant to watch in 2025. While direct human rights violations are evident from these issues, they are also catalytic, often leading people to decades of increased vulnerability as a result of these events. Conflict drives forced displacement, rendering those who must flee conflict more vulnerable to human rights abuses. Sexual violence is rampant against those fleeing along particular routes, with alarming U.N. estimates that as many as 90% of those who fled along the Mediterranean corridor were raped. By mid-2024, nearly 123 million people had been forcibly displaced by conflict and violence, marking the twelfth consecutive annual increase.

Those facing the end of conflict also have legacies of past human rights violations to address. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is already uncovering evidence of decades of human rights abuses. Interviews with those who were released from the Saydnaya military prison, for instance, already notorious for its use of torture, have revealed the nature of abuses of men, women and children, from systematic torture to extrajudicial killings. Estimates as high as  157,000 people were forcibly disappeared since 2011, and their families now embark on the long journey of attempting to relocate them or find out what happened. And Syrians will need to move from war to rebuilding infrastructure, governance, and devising processes of reconciliation to account for past human rights abuses and heal society.

The United States and international partners will need to ask hard questions in the coming year about how to balance their strategic interests and security concerns with the conduct of U.S. allies and partners during warfare, and how to support populations vulnerable to human rights abuses as conflicts evolve around the world.

International Accountability Efforts

The last few years have been particularly complex for the relationship between powerful governments and international courts. The United States lauded and assisted the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its efforts to provide accountability for crimes committed in Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and other Russian politicians; however, efforts at justice by the same body in Gaza were met with bombastic threats. Governments around the world responded very differently in their stated willingness to enforce arrest warrants for Israeli leaders which were approved by the Court. The new U.S. Congress may now be poised to pass legislation that would empower the incoming administration to impose new sanctions in response to the Court’s actions in the Israel-Hamas war. In addition to this current tension, in 2020, the Trump administration sanctioned the ICC’s previous prosecutor and another senior official for their investigations of the United States in Afghanistan. The incoming Trump team is likely to return to such a policy approach through executive action, with or without congressional legislation.

At the same time as these recent events, there was substantial growth in national efforts at accountability for both historical and international human rights violations. Poland, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Finland are all seeing efforts to prosecute members or supporters of the Russian Wagner group, including one case specifically for war crimes. The Special Court of Sierra Leone took the time to look at its own legacy and lessons to be learned from its experience, and both Liberia and the Gambia took important steps forward in the creation of courts to prosecute past human rights violations and provide paths toward justice.

Continued international pressure on international courts such as the ICC and International Court of Justice, which is also hearing a case on Gaza, may lead to increasing efforts of domestic courts to exercise “universal jurisdiction” and prosecute grave human rights violations regardless of where they took place. This potential to create avenues for justice, however, runs the risk of accusations of selective and political prosecutions by States. Given previous Trump administration hostility toward the ICC, one trend to watch will be how Congress – a champion of efforts to hold Russia accountable via the ICC and other means – will respond to the new administration.

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Continued Use of Internet Shutdowns by States

States are becoming more and more adept at switching off the internet in an effort to keep information from spreading amongst populations and keeping information and images from being broadcast to the world. This is a well-honed tactic to hide human rights abuses and shield governments from global pressure fueled by media coverage. These shutdowns have taken place in the context of elections, large-scale protest movements, and even more banal events such as national educational testing schedules. Regardless of the purpose, in addition to preventing the free flow of information, they can create significant economic disruptions and loss of income, widen the gender gap, disproportionately impact persons with disabilities, and disrupt the flow of humanitarian aid.

2023 was the worst year on record for internet shutdowns and 2024 also saw this tactic deployed at high levels. This progress has been paired with troubling new tactics that hide internet shutdowns, appearing instead like technical issues. However, 2024 also saw some positive signs such as robust civil society and activist response bearing fruit. For example, Mauritius planned a 10-day shutdown in advance of the country’s November election. It was reversed after 24 hours due to pressure from civil society, the media, and international partners. The impact of shutdowns makes them a particular item to watch in 2025, and whether governments continue to close off the internet in record numbers or if civil society is successful in maintaining access. International actors, such as the #KeepItOn coalition and the Freedom Online Coalition can also play a key role by expanding and further influencing governments that would otherwise utilize internet shutdowns.

BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Mandatory Business and Human Rights Requirements in the U.S. and European Union

The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) became effective in the EU in July, meaning that by 2026 EU member States will need to have incorporated into domestic law its requirements for environmental and human rights due diligence. 2025 will be the initial year for reporting requirements from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), with companies required to report on a wide range of sustainability topics including environmental, social, and governance (ESG). In December, the EU also published the Forced Labor Regulation (FLR), which bans products made with forced labor from the EU market.

Across the Atlantic, the United States continues to enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Act (UFLPA), which bans goods produced using Uighur forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. Additionally, a recent Executive Order tightened some elements of the de minimis exception, which limits the applicability of the UFLPA and other tariffs to shipments valued above a certain threshold, and the administration encouraged Congress to close it entirely.

Given the number of multinational corporations that operate in either or both of these markets, human rights due diligence, including protecting supply chains from forced labor, will be a significant issue over the coming year. One has to wait to see whether multinational companies aim to comply with ongoing regulations and prepare for upcoming requirements or find ways to challenge them. Additionally, another space to watch is how governments enforce these directives and provide alternative options for supply chains, such as a Fair Labor Innovation Fund to assist in the creation of clean supply chains.

OTHER AREAS WITH HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS

This list is necessarily not comprehensive. Given the expansiveness of human rights, and the ever-changing manner in which governments aim to repress them, there is truly no telling where issues could arise. In addition to the above key issues in the human rights sphere, other areas of foreign policy will undoubtedly have tremendous democracy and human rights implications. This includes the continued adoption and progress of artificial intelligence, including large-language-models that already raise privacy and mis- and disinformation concerns, the realities of a just transition that implicate labor rights and human rights of populations surrounding sites containing critical minerals, shifting polarity and alliances between States as new leadership settles in countries where opposition groups won elections in 2024, and many others.

IMAGE: Wooden gavel and flipping numbers 2024 and 2025 on wooden cubes. (Getty Images)

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