As the calendar turns from 2024 to 2025, the world is faced with unprecedented challenges. Globally, authoritarians continued to gain momentum against democracy. Across Sudan, Gaza, and Ukraine, civilians face consistent and unrelenting conflict-related human rights violations, sexual and gender-based violence, and bloodshed. Authoritarian actors are increasingly emboldened to crack down both within and outside their borders. Poor leadership, rampant insecurity, lack of economic opportunity, and a changing climate continue to create and increase vulnerability of populations across the globe. And those charged with helping populations in need- aid workers- faced the deadliest year on record.
However, there is also hope. After nearly fourteen years, Syrian rebels recently removed one of the world’s most tyrannical regimes from power, calling for respect for minority rights and inclusive, democratic leadership. South Korean civil society and politicians rallied, in just a few hours in the middle of the night, to protect their democracy, thwarting a potential power grab. Gambia and Liberia made long-awaited progress on accountability by forming courts that would examine terrible crimes of their past.
Within this context, the task of those working for international human rights is expansive. These are a few areas to watch in 2024:
DEMOCRACY
Potentially Shifting Positions on Democracy and Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy
Perhaps the closest watched element of democracy and human rights in the coming year is Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term on January 20.
The Biden administration had an inconsistent record on democracy and human rights promotion, with often varied responses depending on geography and political realities, but democracy and human rights were a stated centerpiece of the administration’s foreign policy. This included two Democracy Summits, the creation of two initiatives on strengthening democracy abroad, and a near doubling of the budgetary request for democracy, rights and governance support from the final year of the first Trump administration.
How the second Trump administration handles democracy and human rights promotion will be a key issue for the coming year. President Trump has a mixed record, often being accused of favoring the company and approach of autocrats and taking a transactional approach to foreign policy. Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has a long history with foreign policy, including democracy and human rights promotion, and has been vocal in his support for human rights in his previous role with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), in particular in the PRC and amongst left-leaning countries in Latin America. He was also a co-sponsor of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the Senate, a key tool in fighting forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.
In addition to administration priorities, Congressional power of the purse could have a significant impact on democracy and human rights promotion in the incoming administration. Congress has long provided substantial bipartisan support for democracy promotion through the appropriation process, often directing funds for specific democracy and human rights related goals under the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) budgetary process. This approach was common under the first Trump administration to increase support for democracy and human rights promotion despite disinterest from the White House. Congress also provides appropriations for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is an independent foundation and thus outside the direct control of administration priorities. Whether Congress opts to use this power to contradict a Trump administration and whether that leads to greater or lesser support for democracy and human rights promotion, remains to be seen.
Democratic Backsliding and Authoritarian Networks
According to Freedom House, 2024 marked the 18th consecutive year the world has seen a decline in collective democratic freedoms. Over the previous year, freedom declined for 22% of the world’s population. The reasons for this decline are diverse, including many on this list such as conflict, flawed elections and coups, increased digital repression and internet shutdowns. Collectively, these factors have resulted in a difficult atmosphere for human rights in much of the world.
This level of antidemocratic success has emboldened dictators and authoritarians and fostered an environment of cross learning and support amongst repressive governments. We are currently seeing North Korean troops and a wide array of Chinese technology alongside Iranian-made drones play a role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is but one example of many.
Key questions for 2025 will be whether the nearly two-decade trend of democratic backsliding continues, how authoritarians continue to align and collaborate, and how democratic governments, civil society actors, and ordinary individuals respond to these trends. As there is greater cross-learning amongst authoritarian actors, tactics for combatting authoritarianism learned in one area of the globe will be ever more relevant in others. Whether similar coalitions are made across these forces will be of tremendous interest in 2025 and beyond.
Authoritarian Adoption of the Language of Democracy and Human Rights
Rather than embracing the narrative of a less-free world and advocating against democracy and human rights, over the last several years authoritarian regimes have worked to take the mantle and redefine democracy and human rights to their own ends. In a joint statement from the PRC and Russia in 2022, the countries stated: “It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one,” and note that “Russia and China guarantee their people the right to take part through various means and in various forms in the administration of the State and public life in accordance with the law. The people of both countries are certain of the way they have chosen and respect the democratic systems and traditions of other States.” These countries have increasingly leveraged this language in an attempt to discredit their adversaries, including the United States, in multilateral fora. They have also advocated for multistakeholder fora that broaden the tent of entities that should be involved in global norm-setting, but do so in a voluntary manner, degrading the responsibilities of States and sidestepping the requirements States have to respect human rights as a matter of obligation.
This points to the continued value and power of democracy and human rights as concepts, even if they are in increasingly short supply. Polling data bears out both of these perceptions, that democracy is still extremely important to individuals the world over, and even those in democratic countries are concerned about how it is functioning. With this in mind, authoritarian governments are likely to continue to try to repurpose the language of democracy and human rights for their own ends. Should such States opt to abandon this language, casting such framing aside, it would point to a belief that democratic principles are no longer relevant in international discourse, perhaps an even more troubling development.
Continuous Demand for Democracy
While democracy and human rights have been in retreat for nearly two decades, democracy is still in demand. In the 2024 U.S. election, exit polls indicated a fear for democracy as the most important major issue amongst those polled. 73% of those polled believed U.S. democracy is threatened, with that number split nearly evenly between democrats and republicans. Afrobarometer demonstrates high levels of support for democracy across 39 African countries surveyed, as well as a wide rejection of other types of rule including by one-man, one-party, or the military. Similarly high levels of support for democracy has been found in other regions including Latin America and the Arab World.
Despite high demand, there is also widespread concern that democracy is not working for many individuals. This is reflected both in polling data and in the success opposition parties had globally in the 2024 “year of elections,” in which voters roundly threw out incumbent parties seen as not delivering, but did so without throwing out the democratic system writ large. Citizen desire for democracy is among the greatest guardrails against democratic backsliding. If 2025 sees demand falter, or if continually declining levels of freedom create apathy, both authoritarians and would-be authoritarians may be further emboldened.
CONFLICT AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Conflict-Related Human Rights Violations
2024 was the deadliest on record for global conflicts, with 233,000 people killed over the course of the year, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event (ACLED) data. A startling 1 in 8 people were within 5km of conflict around the globe. This number has grown by 30% in the last year, which is likely an underestimate, given the lack of data surrounding conflicts such as Sudan, and it appears only set to increase. Conflict areas of escalation to watch include Ukraine, Colombia, Mexico, the Sahel, Sudan, the Great Lakes region, Gaza, and the West Bank, with uncertainty looming in the broader Middle East as Syria embarks on a new chapter of governance and Lebanon and Israel maintains their recent ceasefire.
One trend driving these increases is changes in the way that warfare is conducted, both tactically and in the erosion of respect for international norms. Bombing is increasingly used as a tactic, with some estimates placing an increase in the use of this method as high as 300 percent over the past five years. The use of explosive weapons in populated areas leads to wider civilian casualties, which is why the United States and more than 80 countries endorsed a voluntary political declaration in 2022, setting new international standards that aim to minimize civilian harm from this practice. Yet, the declaration is non-binding, and the United States and other States who signed it continue to provide arms to States using this tactic in populated areas.
Sexual and gender-based violence, starvation as a weapon of war, and a widespread lack of respect for international humanitarian law that has caused historic levels of deaths of humanitarian aid workers, journalists, and health workers are all on the rise, and are relevant to watch in 2025. While direct human rights violations are evident from these issues, they are also catalytic, often leading people to decades of increased vulnerability as a result of these events. Conflict drives forced displacement, rendering those who must flee conflict more vulnerable to human rights abuses. Sexual violence is rampant against those fleeing along particular routes, with alarming U.N. estimates that as many as 90% of those who fled along the Mediterranean corridor were raped. By mid-2024, nearly 123 million people had been forcibly displaced by conflict and violence, marking the twelfth consecutive annual increase.
Those facing the end of conflict also have legacies of past human rights violations to address. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is already uncovering evidence of decades of human rights abuses. Interviews with those who were released from the Saydnaya military prison, for instance, already notorious for its use of torture, have revealed the nature of abuses of men, women and children, from systematic torture to extrajudicial killings. Estimates as high as 157,000 people were forcibly disappeared since 2011, and their families now embark on the long journey of attempting to relocate them or find out what happened. And Syrians will need to move from war to rebuilding infrastructure, governance, and devising processes of reconciliation to account for past human rights abuses and heal society.
The United States and international partners will need to ask hard questions in the coming year about how to balance their strategic interests and security concerns with the conduct of U.S. allies and partners during warfare, and how to support populations vulnerable to human rights abuses as conflicts evolve around the world.
International Accountability Efforts
The last few years have been particularly complex for the relationship between powerful governments and international courts. The United States lauded and assisted the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its efforts to provide accountability for crimes committed in Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and other Russian politicians; however, efforts at justice by the same body in Gaza were met with bombastic threats. Governments around the world responded very differently in their stated willingness to enforce arrest warrants for Israeli leaders which were approved by the Court. The new U.S. Congress may now be poised to pass legislation that would empower the incoming administration to impose new sanctions in response to the Court’s actions in the Israel-Hamas war. In addition to this current tension, in 2020, the Trump administration sanctioned the ICC’s previous prosecutor and another senior official for their investigations of the United States in Afghanistan. The incoming Trump team is likely to return to such a policy approach through executive action, with or without congressional legislation.
At the same time as these recent events, there was substantial growth in national efforts at accountability for both historical and international human rights violations. Poland, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Finland are all seeing efforts to prosecute members or supporters of the Russian Wagner group, including one case specifically for war crimes. The Special Court of Sierra Leone took the time to look at its own legacy and lessons to be learned from its experience, and both Liberia and the Gambia took important steps forward in the creation of courts to prosecute past human rights violations and provide paths toward justice.
Continued international pressure on international courts such as the ICC and International Court of Justice, which is also hearing a case on Gaza, may lead to increasing efforts of domestic courts to exercise “universal jurisdiction” and prosecute grave human rights violations regardless of where they took place. This potential to create avenues for justice, however, runs the risk of accusations of selective and political prosecutions by States. Given previous Trump administration hostility toward the ICC, one trend to watch will be how Congress – a champion of efforts to hold Russia accountable via the ICC and other means – will respond to the new administration.
TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Continued Use of Internet Shutdowns by States
States are becoming more and more adept at switching off the internet in an effort to keep information from spreading amongst populations and keeping information and images from being broadcast to the world. This is a well-honed tactic to hide human rights abuses and shield governments from global pressure fueled by media coverage. These shutdowns have taken place in the context of elections, large-scale protest movements, and even more banal events such as national educational testing schedules. Regardless of the purpose, in addition to preventing the free flow of information, they can create significant economic disruptions and loss of income, widen the gender gap, disproportionately impact persons with disabilities, and disrupt the flow of humanitarian aid.
2023 was the worst year on record for internet shutdowns and 2024 also saw this tactic deployed at high levels. This progress has been paired with troubling new tactics that hide internet shutdowns, appearing instead like technical issues. However, 2024 also saw some positive signs such as robust civil society and activist response bearing fruit. For example, Mauritius planned a 10-day shutdown in advance of the country’s November election. It was reversed after 24 hours due to pressure from civil society, the media, and international partners. The impact of shutdowns makes them a particular item to watch in 2025, and whether governments continue to close off the internet in record numbers or if civil society is successful in maintaining access. International actors, such as the #KeepItOn coalition and the Freedom Online Coalition can also play a key role by expanding and further influencing governments that would otherwise utilize internet shutdowns.
BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Mandatory Business and Human Rights Requirements in the U.S. and European Union
The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) became effective in the EU in July, meaning that by 2026 EU member States will need to have incorporated into domestic law its requirements for environmental and human rights due diligence. 2025 will be the initial year for reporting requirements from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), with companies required to report on a wide range of sustainability topics including environmental, social, and governance (ESG). In December, the EU also published the Forced Labor Regulation (FLR), which bans products made with forced labor from the EU market.
Across the Atlantic, the United States continues to enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Act (UFLPA), which bans goods produced using Uighur forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. Additionally, a recent Executive Order tightened some elements of the de minimis exception, which limits the applicability of the UFLPA and other tariffs to shipments valued above a certain threshold, and the administration encouraged Congress to close it entirely.
Given the number of multinational corporations that operate in either or both of these markets, human rights due diligence, including protecting supply chains from forced labor, will be a significant issue over the coming year. One has to wait to see whether multinational companies aim to comply with ongoing regulations and prepare for upcoming requirements or find ways to challenge them. Additionally, another space to watch is how governments enforce these directives and provide alternative options for supply chains, such as a Fair Labor Innovation Fund to assist in the creation of clean supply chains.
OTHER AREAS WITH HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS
This list is necessarily not comprehensive. Given the expansiveness of human rights, and the ever-changing manner in which governments aim to repress them, there is truly no telling where issues could arise. In addition to the above key issues in the human rights sphere, other areas of foreign policy will undoubtedly have tremendous democracy and human rights implications. This includes the continued adoption and progress of artificial intelligence, including large-language-models that already raise privacy and mis- and disinformation concerns, the realities of a just transition that implicate labor rights and human rights of populations surrounding sites containing critical minerals, shifting polarity and alliances between States as new leadership settles in countries where opposition groups won elections in 2024, and many others.