The world is in a “democratic recession,” with nearly three-quarters of people now living under autocratic rule—levels not seen since the 1980s—according to Human Rights Watch’s annual country-by-country assessment. Philippe Bolopion, HRW’s executive director, warned the system that supports human rights is “in peril,” calling the rise of authoritarianism “the challenge of a generation.”
Bolopion said 2025 marked a “tipping point” for rights and freedoms in the United States. In its first year, the Trump administration carried out a wide-ranging assault on pillars of American democracy and the global rules-based order the US helped establish, he said, noting a steady erosion of checks and balances meant to limit executive power and protect rights. He pointed to President Trump’s recent calls to “nationalise” the US voting system and revelations about a $500m investment by an Emirati royal into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company as examples of troubling trends. “Every day you see confirmation of this trend,” Bolopion said, describing an “organised, relentless, determined assault” on institutions from courts to the press.
HRW documents actions by the administration that undermine electoral trust, weaken government accountability, attack judicial independence, defy court orders, and use state power to intimidate political opponents, media, law firms, universities, civil society and even comedians. Recent measures include curbs on free speech and policies that result in deportations to countries where people may face torture, all of which the organisation says amount to an assault on the rule of law.
Combined with longstanding efforts by Russia and China to weaken the international rules-based order, the US administration’s conduct has global repercussions, leaving the human rights framework at risk. “Under relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed,” Bolopion said, threatening the architecture human rights defenders rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms. He warned that Trump has boasted he does not “need international law” and relies only on his “own morality.”
HRW also criticises the UK government, saying Britain “repeatedly undermined” rights in 2025. The report singles out the Labour government’s punitive immigration approach as helping normalise anti-migrant rhetoric and embolden the far right, and it condemns a crackdown on protest rights and insufficient action on the cost-of-living crisis. Bolopion said anti-migrant narratives have become a dangerous trend across Europe—affecting France, Germany and other countries—and that Trump’s rhetoric, which portrays Europe as threatened by “civilisational erasure,” feeds and flirts with far-right ideology.
The report stresses that the democratic recession predates Trump and has been building for decades. Democracy metrics are back to 1985 levels, with 72% of the global population now under autocratic regimes. That trend, together with the weakening of the rules-based order, creates a “perfect storm” endangering human rights worldwide. HRW’s foreword states: “Russia and China are less free today than 20 years ago. And so is the United States.”
Bolopion called for democracies—including the UK, the EU and Canada—to form a strategic alliance to defend the rules-based international order. Such a coalition could act as an economic bloc offering incentives to counter policies that undermine multilateral trade governance and human rights, and could form a powerful voting bloc at the UN. He also stressed the vital role of civil society in resisting authoritarian trends, saying this is a time for action, not despair.
Despite the grim assessment, Bolopion pointed to signs of resistance: anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis after the fatal shootings by federal immigration officers, large protests in Iran that began over economic collapse and expanded into wider political demands, and Gen Z demonstrations in Morocco over underfunded healthcare and education. These movements, he said, offer reasons for hope amid a dangerous new era for rights and freedoms.