Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025.

2024: A Year of Reckoning By Tirana Hassan, Executive Director

​Leadership Lessons and Opportunities
The past year has once again highlighted an often-disregarded reality: liberal democracies are not always reliable champions of human rights at home or abroad.
 
US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy has demonstrated a double standard when it comes to human rights, providing arms without restriction to Israel despite its widespread atrocities in Gaza, while condemning Russia for similar violations in Ukraine, and failing to address serious rights abuses by partners like the United Arab Emirates, India, and Kenya. Donald Trump’s return to the White House not only threatens rights within the US but will also affect, by commission and omission, respect for human rights abroad. If the first Trump administration’s attacks on multilateral institutions, international law, and the rights of marginalised groups are any indication, his second term could inflict even greater human rights damage, including by emboldening illiberal leaders worldwide to follow suit.
 
Europe, too, faces significant human rights challenges. A growing number of European governments have used economic stagnation and security issues as a pretext to justify their selective jettisoning of rights, especially of marginalized groups and migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, while failing to take credible action to improve economic and social rights. Authoritarian leaders have gained ground in elections with their discriminatory rhetoric and policies being normalized by mainstream parties that adopt their agenda even as many voters resist their advance.
 
This fragmented political landscape reflects a broader truth: the shared values and commitment of human rights for all cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, the appeal of populist leaders lies in their willingness to scapegoat minorities and foreigners and offer voters the mirage of “solutions” in exchange for trading away their rights and the rule of law. Yet when everyone’s rights and dignity are protected, societies flourish, highlighting their inseparable link.
 
The past year reinforced the importance of looking to governments across regions to display bold leadership on human rights and accountability – and they will need to do so more often. Mexico and Gambia led the charge in galvanizing cross-regional support in the UN General Assembly to move ahead on a draft crimes against humanity convention, a critical step to support domestic prosecutions of widespread and systematic crimes against civilian populations even in the absence of armed conflict.
 
Sierra Leone and the Dominican Republic joined Luxembourg to champion a new multinational treaty to strengthen the right to education to ensure free schooling at the pre-primary and secondary levels for all children, which could reduce poverty and inequality and support the realization of other rights.
 
When governments call out violations of international law, as South Africa did in bringing a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention in Gaza, or several states in contesting the Taliban in Afghanistan for violating the UN convention on women’s rights, it can raise the bar for its enforcement.
 
The ICJ’s string of provisional measures ordering Israel to prevent further harm to the Palestinian population in Gaza may have had limited effect so far in stemming Israeli abuses, but they have contributed to increased scrutiny of governments supplying Israel with weapons.
 
Thus the United Kingdom suspended some arms export licenses to Israel following a review that certain exports posed a clear risk of being used to commit or facilitate abuses, which reflects how pressure is growing for governments to rethink arms transfers to Israel.
 
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025. New York.