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Global democracy has wound back to 1985 levels - that's the latest assessment by Human Rights Watch in their annual report.
The United States, China and Russia are named almost instantly in the Executive Director's opening chapter, cited as threats to the rules-based international order.
Philippe Bolopion says the global human rights system is in peril.
“In the world for the last 20 years, democracy has been receding steadily. And every time democracy recedes, it's bad for human rights, it's bad for the full range of human rights. So we've had like, you know, an adverse environment, I would say, for the last 20 years with, you know, many countries becoming less free.”
The United States takes the focus.
The very opening chapter of the report is titled 'Will Human Rights Survive a Trumpian World?'
“It's actually incredible to see how the Trump administration has really undermined all the pillars of U.S. democracy, all the checks and balances on power. These days still, you know, sort of undermining the trust in elections, the sanctity of elections, going after the judiciary and judges going after journalists.”
These issues are only part of a long list of deficiencies outlined in the report, which also includes the United States' destruction of food assistance and healthcare subsidies, women's rights, and programs to support non-white people, people with disability, and trans people.
Mr Bolopion also cites the erosion of privacy, and the use of government power to intimidate political opponents, the media, law firms, universities, civil society, and even comedians.
It's 'Trump's new world disorder', the report says, where 'might makes right and atrocities are not dealbreakers'.
Ashkaya Kumar is the director of crisis advocacy at Human Rights Watch, and says while no country has a perfect record, these issues signal a huge reversal of the United States' traditional role in upholding the broader multilateral order.
“What we've seen in the past 12 months is a US government that's not just stepped away from that role, but what we point out is new hostility to the very idea of international law as a constraint US President Donald Trump has said his morality is the only constraint he feels necessary and deep scepticism for the multilateral order. The US has quit 66 international organizations. It is refusing to pay its UN dues, which is actually required to be a part of the UN by law. And so it is also sanctioning judges of the international criminal court in the Hague. And these steps are of a different caliber than anything we've seen from an American administration in the past.”
But China and Russia also play a significant role.
These global powers are cited as being less free today than 20 years ago, while the report also notes democracy is receding in India.
Ms Kumar says the United States is actually adopting some of these powers' authoritarian policies, referencing Chinese use of Interpol red notices to pursue dissidents and Russian attempts to block multilateral statements that might refer to gender.
“These are all a playbook that other middle power authoritarian countries have also enabled. And now we're seeing the US joining that fray. So recently at the United Nations, we've seen the US coming out and saying, we can't accept any language on gender. This is something that we previously would have expected more to be a Russian objection. We also are very aware of the broader campaign misinformation and disinformation that has been tied to state-owned entities, enterprises in China and Russia. And I think that the tech angle to the broader transnational repression that we've seen from these two governments is certainly worth scrutinising.”
But it's not just these global powers being spotlit.
Australia is also condemned for its failures to protect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, among a number of other issues.
The United Nations has already condemned the Australian government's lack of transparency around its immigration detention policy and practices, and following a visit at the end of last year they said Australia's mandatory detention regime violated international human rights.
Annabel Hennessy is Australian Researcher for Human Rights Watch and says the organisation has been disappointed to see the failure of the Australian government to respond to UN findings.
“And instead, what we saw later on in the year was it expand its abusive policies via the announcement of the new deal with Nauru, which could potentially see hundreds of people deported to Nauru once again. And also what's particularly concerning about those laws is the fact that when they were passed, they also passed new laws to deny the right of asylum seekers or other people being forcibly transferred to Nauru the right to fair process.”
The Minister for Home Affairs was contacted for comment.
Australia is also criticised for its youth detention policies, including its law enabling the age of criminal responsibility to start from 10 years old, below the United Nations standard.
Failure to protect First Nations Australians is also noted, including the much higher rates of child removal for First Nations people.
Racism is also tainting Australia's record, with the report highlighting the Bondi terror attack which killed 15 people in December last year.
Ms Hennessy says the solution isn't simple but preventative policies are key, criticising gaps in the government's recent hate speech laws established in response to the terrorist attack.
“So under the laws, groups aren't given a right to procedural fairness. So this means that there's no evidential standards of what's required for a hate crime, what's required for a group to be listed, and also that the groups don't get an opportunity to respond. Our concern there is that if groups get listed who are not inciting violence or there's not evidence that they're inciting violence, and we don't want Australia to follow the ranks of other governments where they have listed peaceful civic groups as hate groups or as terrorist groups.”
Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to enforcing human rights protections is Australia's absence of a human rights act - the only western democracy without one.
“What it would do as well is ensure that what is written into our domestic laws is what Australia has already signed up for in regards to the various treaties it's already a party to because what various government inquiries have found is currently we have patchwork protections, and even in the case of refugees, the Australian government has actually removed references to the Refugee Convention in our Migration Act.”
Human Rights Watch says protection for vulnerable people, including asylum seekers, has never been more important - as the world confronts conflicts across multiple regions.
Israel's war on Gaza captured global attention and condemnation, as countries signed joint statements heavily criticising the use of starvation as a weapon of war and the killing of innocent civilians.
The organisation describes Israel's war on Gaza as a genocide - allegations Israel continues to reject.
Ms Kumar says one of the most insidious aspects of the conflict is support and provision of weapons to Israel from countries including the US, UK and Germany - eroding norms that are supposed to prevent weapons from being sold to actors who violate the laws of war.
“And that is a bigger problem for all of us because it requires them to either make the argument that Israel is not violating the laws of war, which stretches credulity and asks us to ignore the facts that all of us are aware of. Or it requires us to accept some kind of Israel exception where the law will be applied to a place like South Sudan or the Central African Republic, but not to an actor like Israel. And neither is good for the rules based international order.”
That's why, Ms Kumar says, countries that value human rights have a vital role to play in holding other actors to account.
“A country like Australia, for example, has reserved its judgment. So it said, oh, we would leave it to the US to identify the legal basis for their actions. And that's just not how we see Australia even deal with human rights situations in other places. For example, if the Malaysian government was involved in an extrajudicial killing, I think that we would see the Australian government doing that fact and law analysis itself. And so I think central to any effective campaign to rejuvenate the broader global human rights movement and safeguard the architecture is a commitment to equal application of the law to all actors.”
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Since publication SBS has received a response from the Home Affairs Department. Among other things it says: "The arrangement with Nauru is compliant with Australian’s international obligations. The Australian Government is committed to maintaining a migration system that is robust, effective and in the national interest."
