Comprehensive Scoring Analysis

The world is in a “democratic recession” with almost three-quarters of the global population now living under autocrati…

The system underpinning human rights was “in peril”, said Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch (…

Speaking before the launch of the human rights watchdog’s annual country-by-country assessment, published on Wednesday,…

In just 12 months, the Trump administration has carried out a broad assault on key pillars of American democracy and th…

It was now working in the “opposite direction”, he said.

Citing Donald Trump’s calls on Republicans this week to “nationalise” the US voting system and revelations that a membe…

” He called on democracies, including the UK, the European Union and Canada, to form a strategic alliance to preserve t…

The HRW report catalogues attacks on the rights-based system during Trump’s second-term administration.

They include undermining trust in the sanctity of elections, reducing government accountability, attacking judicial ind…

Recent abuses, from attacks on free speech to deporting people to countries where they may face torture, underscored th…

Combined with longstanding efforts by Russia and China to weaken the global rules-based order, the US administration’s …

“Under relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-b…

View image in fullscreen St George’s flags in Kent last year.

The appearance of union and England flags on lamp-posts has been linked to the rise of anti-migrant sentiment and the f…

Photograph: Getty “Trump has boasted that he doesn’t ‘need international law’ as a constraint, only his ‘own morality’,…

HRW also reports on the UK, finding that the British government “repeatedly undermined” rights in 2025.

The Labour government’s punitive approach to immigration had played a “key role” in making the anti-migrant rhetoric th…

The human rights organisation criticises the UK’s authoritarian crackdown on the right to protest and a failure to addr…

Anti-migrant rhetoric was a “dangerous trend for human rights in the UK, but also France and Germany and other European…

By also leaning into racist tropes to cast entire populations in the US as unwelcome, he was “flirting with far-right i…

This “democratic recession” pre-dated 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.

Together with the undermining of the rules-based order, this presented a “perfect storm” for human rights and freedoms …

The foreword to the report states: “Russia and China are less free today than .

And so is the United States.

” An alliance of rights-based democracies could become a “powerful force” and a “substantial economic bloc”, offering i…

The work of civil society was also crucial in this “dangerous new world”, he said.

“It is a challenging time but one for action, not for despair.

” There was hope he said, citing public anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, after the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and …