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."
"Trump's second administration has been marked from the start by blatant disregard for human rights and egregious violations," the report said.
HRW cited, among other examples, "unnecessarily violent and abusive" raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the arrest of foreign students over political statements.
The Trump administration is seeking to weaken international institutions created to enforce human rights standards and hold violators to account, the organization said.
Meanwhile in Russia, as President Vladimir Putin continues the war against Ukraine, pressure on Kremlin critics is growing both inside Russia and abroad, according to HRW.
Political opponents are increasingly silenced or imprisoned on what the organization described as "bogus charges."
In November, Russia's Justice Ministry designated HRW an "undesirable" foreign organization, effectively banning its work in the country.
The annual report documents further restrictions imposed on women in Afghanistan by the Taliban. These include bans on the use of textbooks written by women at universities and arrests for violating strict dress codes.
HRW now refers to the situation as "gender apartheid."
In Iran, the watchdog sees the current situation as particularly dramatic. In addition to the suppression of the most recent wave of protests, the organization reported mass arrests and a very high number of executions.
The death penalty has been imposed both for drug-related offences and following politically motivated, unfair trials, the report said. Members of ethnic minorities were particularly affected.
The report also noted setbacks over the past year in the rights of gender minority people, including in Hungary and the U.S.
