The non-governmental organization “Human Rights Watch“ warned today that US President Donald Trump is turning his country into an authoritarian state, while democracy and human rights are under attack from all sides. This conclusion is contained in the annual report of the non-governmental organization based in New York, reported Agence France-Presse.
According to the human rights organization, the return to the White House of the Republican billionaire has intensified the downward spiral in the field of human rights, which are already under pressure in the world from Russia and China.
“The international rules-based order is collapsing“, the organization warns.
In the United States, according to it, Trump shows “a clear disregard for human rights and has committed gross violations“.
The report depicts this country in a way that would be unthinkable in previous annual reports of the human rights organization, notes Agence France-Presse. In the part about the United States “Human Rights Watch“ for example, it points to the deployment of masked and armed agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, who have carried out “hundreds of raids involving unnecessary violence and abuses of power and human rights”, particularly in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“The administration's targeting of racial or ethnic scapegoats, its repeated crackdowns on perceived political enemies, and its attempts to expand executive coercive powers and neutralize democratic checks and balances underscore a deliberate slide toward authoritarianism in the United States,” the report states.
“Human Rights Watch“ also reiterates its findings that the United States is guilty of enforced disappearances — a crime under international law — by sending 252 Venezuelan migrants to a high-security prison in El Salvador.
According to the organization, democracy in the world has returned to the level of 1985, when the Soviet Union still existed. “Russia and China are less free today than they were 20 years ago. The same is true for the United States“, the report says.
“With the first year of Trump's second term in office, history is accelerating in the wrong direction: all the achievements and progress achieved with great effort over the past decades are now at risk“, warns Philip Bolopion, executive director of “Human Rights Watch“ in an interview with Agence France-Presse.
“The human rights movement is under attack from the Trump administration, but also from Russia and China“, which despite their strategic rivalries could be seen as “almost allies in their quest to undermine, shake and weaken a system of rights protection that limits their power“, also said the head of the NGO, a former journalist who began his career in Kosovo, covered numerous conflicts and spent 13 years in the structures of “Human Rights Watch“ before heading it at the end of 2025.
In this “new world of aggressive superpowers that are hostile to human rights”, the UN is “completely on the defensive, weakened and unable to respond to the urgency of "The crises are multiplying, they are more intense and they last longer. Today our emergency response team is working in Venezuela, in Iran, in Gaza, in Darfur, in Ukraine... We even have one in Minneapolis in the US, which is completely new for us," he explains, recalling that the two Americans were killed in that city by immigration agents during an operation there and that mass arrests of immigrants have also been carried out there in recent weeks.
On the front lines, civil society organizations have also seen their space for action significantly narrow in recent years. For example, "Human Rights Watch" itself was forced to close its offices in Hong Kong, Moscow and Egypt, and its "director for Israel-Palestine was expelled from Jerusalem," the executive director noted.
“We NGOs are very concerned about whether we will be able to continue to operate completely freely in the US. It is completely new to have to worry about retaliation from the US government, but the Trump administration is openly hostile to all critical voices“, adds Bolopion. “It has already targeted the (US billionaire and philanthropist George) Soros Foundation, has threatened political opponents, so our presence in the US is no longer safe”, he adds.
Faced with these serious challenges and sometimes the impossibility of deploying teams on the ground, “Human Rights Watch“ adapt, uses in particular technologies such as artificial intelligence, drones and satellite imagery to continue to investigate and document human rights violations, specifies Philippe Bolopion.
According to the organization, the response must come from “a new alliance, a strategic alliance“ of “middle powers“ united around “a common core of values“ related to democracy and respect for international law— such as Canada, the countries of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, South Korea and Australia.
The 529-page report sharply diverges from the conclusions of the recently published human rights report of the US State Department, which softened it in the sections dedicated to countries with close relations with the Trump administration, such as El Salvador, notes Agence France-Presse. “Human Rights Watch“ specifies that gang violence in that country has "significantly decreased" but that the authorities committed "widespread violations, including mass arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, as well as violations of the right to a fair trial" in 2025.
With regard to Israel, the organization again condemned "crimes against humanity, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians in Gaza. According to it, the Israeli authorities have "intensified their atrocities" in 2025, in particular by “killing, maiming, starving, and forcibly displacing Palestinians, as well as by destroying their homes, schools, and infrastructure on a scale unprecedented in the recent history of Israel and Palestine“.
Israel has vehemently rejected the accusation of genocide, first formulated by “Human Rights Watch“ in December 2024.