Human Rights Watch released its World Report 2026 Wednesday, painting one of its bleakest pictures in years of the global human rights situation.
"The global human rights system is in peril," said Philippe Bolopion, executive director at HRW.
"Under relentless pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders have come to rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms," he said.
"To defy this trend, governments that still value human rights, alongside social movements, civil society, and international institutions, need to form a strategic alliance to push back."
Bolopion said that "Russia and China are less free today than 20 years ago. And so is the United States."
