The Erosion of Human Rights: A 2025 Perspective

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 United States of America 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 "God -given natural rights of its citizens," as appears at various points. Besides re-enacting 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. 

By invoking “God-given natural rights,” it revives one of the notions most dear to ultraconservatives regarding human rights: it emphasizes a meaning for human rights and for choices that will favor certain rights at the expense of others, and which even embraces an explicitly anti-rights agenda – selecting rights to promote, as privileges, and others to attack.

This is so much the case that, when one reads in the document the recognition of the rise of xenophobia, authoritarianism, and anti-rights agendas, hailed as if they were signs of democratic renewal, one perceives the radical nature of this choice. 

Another aspect that denotes this position is when it understands migration as a “systemic threat” to the security and “civilizational continuity” of the United States and Europe. Migrants, along with women, environmentalists, teachers, artists, journalists, and various others who for some reason disagree with Trump's position, become “convenient culprits,” targets of priority and permanent attack, serving to absorb social frustration and divert attention from who is truly responsible for contemporary problems – fictitious enemies serve to confuse, while the wealthy few continue to accumulate more and more.

The document is a stark warning on International Human Rights Day… it seems there will be no future for them, and therefore for most of humanity and living beings, except for those who accept subjugation and become lackeys to the desires of the empire, as always… which tries, at all costs, to maintain itself.

Ultraconservative and anti-human rights movements are advancing, above all, through the instrumental and self-serving use of human rights. This represents a shift in how these political-ideological sectors routinely deal with human rights, given that their historical practice (which dates back to the French anti-revolutionaries) has always been one of total attack and rejection of human rights.

The stance now is different: selectively invoking human rights – not all, some, those that are convenient – ​​not for everyone, but for “friends” – a form of “politics of friendship” in reverse – and for those whom God created as beings with rights – not in the sense of original Christian universalism, for example, but in the mind of a Christianity of prosperity and domination. 

Human rights are being transformed into tools to serve "privileges" and "privileged" individuals, breaking with one of the most cherished—and no less controversial—notions of human rights: their universality and, consequently, the condemnation of all discrimination.

Human rights, therefore, are not human rights, and perhaps Trump won't even mention them in his document. The season for attacking certain rights and certain subjects of rights is open. The use of rights to guarantee privileges is underway. The great monster will trample even harder on people's innocence.

On the other hand, some events highlight the importance of resistance, however fragile and insufficient, to this dynamic of dismantling the multilateral protection structure in 2025. One example is the approval of a treaty on pandemics by the World Health Organization (WHO) in May, at its 78th World Assembly.

Another is the holding of COP30 in Brazil, without the presence of the United States, which, although it did not approve a "roadmap," made progress on issues of human rights, labor rights, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and women as necessary in a just transition.

But these came before the "declaration of war on rights and life" presented by Trump at the beginning of December. Resistance will have to be even stronger and more organized, permanent and consistent, if it truly wants to confront the deadly machine of destruction underway and now declared as a "strategy."  

In light of all this, still perplexed, but encouraged and emboldened, I recall Mercedes Sosa's words: "I only ask God" (1978): "that pain not be indifferent to me"... "that injustice not be indifferent to me"... "that war not be indifferent to me"... "that lies not be indifferent to me"... in short, "that the future not be indifferent to me."

May none of us remain indifferent to all this, and may we awaken to the great challenges that this moment presents to us in the field of human rights. The greatest of these, recalling what Conceição Evaristo said speaking of Black men and women, and which may be valid for all who defend human rights: "They conspired to kill us, we conspired not to die," and to continue together, in struggle, for life, in abundance. Long live human rights... today perhaps more as a wish than as a guarantee! Even so, long live the struggle for human rights!

* Paulo César Carbonari holds a doctorate in philosophy (Unisinos), is a member of the national coordination of the National Human Rights Movement (MNDH Brasil) and the national coordination of the Brazilian Network for Human Rights Education (ReBEDH); he coordinates the Seeds of Protection project for SMDH/MNDH with support from the European Union. This article was originally published at https://brasildefato.com.br/

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.