International Youth Day: How Youth Movements in Asia Are Changing Politics

The first year of the Trump Administration has accelerated and deepened the assault on human rights globally and here at home. In less than 12 months, the administration has undertaken unprecedented actions to weaken the core institutional architecture designed to protect the rights of vulnerable communities around the world. It has decimated the State Department’s human rights offices; dismantled the Women, Peace, and Security framework; pulled back and halted funding for global accountability and justice efforts; reshaped the State Department’s annual Human Rights Reports to obscure abuses by allies; and weaponized U.S. aid to penalize countries for supporting diversity and equity policies, LGBTQI+ communities, and the reproductive rights of women.

These are not isolated actions carried out solely by President Trump wielding his executive power, but a part of a broader foundational agenda bent on reshaping and undermining the norms and structures established to protect and uphold human rights domestically and globally.

On the multilateral stage, the administration has withdrawn from key elements of the international human rights system that the United States once helped build. Most notably, it has pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council and has become the first and only country to walk away from the Universal Periodic Review, a process that assesses the human rights records of all U.N. member states.

Moreover, it has exploited the impact of growing income inequality to scapegoat various groups and undermine inclusive governance. The administration has rolled back civil and human rights and advanced anti-LGBTQI+ and anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion policies; imposed punitive measures targeting activists (particularly within racial justice movements), asylum seekers, and immigrant communities; and elevated officials openly hostile to equality and justice, including individuals aligned with white nationalist ideologies. All told, these actions erode the foundational belief that every person is entitled to fundamental rights and dignity.

The Trump Administration has been able to carry out such a sweeping dismantling of U.S. human rights protections within an extraordinarily short period of time because of a large network of enablers prepared to justify and normalize these actions in exchange for influence, profit, and power. They operate inside and outside the government, within legal and political institutions, and are among some of the biggest actors in the tech sector and corporate America.

The consequences have been devastating. Authoritarian forces at home and abroad have been emboldened, and threats against marginalized communities are on the rise both domestically and globally. These anti-democratic forces are working in coordination, sharing strategies, resources, technology, and tools to undermine human rights and democratic norms and to reshape and weaken multilateral institutions across the globe.

Our country is at an inflection point, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. If there is a lesson to be learned this year, it is that our institutions are far more fragile than we had hoped, and we cannot simply rely on checks and balances to protect our rights. History has shown time and again that the erosion of rights takes far less time than their establishment or their restoration.

But there is reason for hope. The administration’s unprecedented assault on human rights has triggered an extraordinary wave of popular mobilization. As it has rolled back protections for LGBTQI+ people, women, communities of color, asylum seekers, workers, and immigrants, activists and ordinary Americans have responded with lawsuits, mass organizing, and cross-movement solidarity. Our organization, The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, is proud to be a part of this response by informing lawmakers, engaging the public, and working alongside affected communities to speak out in defense of human rights and democratic values.

And we are not as divided as the Trump Administration would have us believe. While there are fundamental differences and concerns about some human rights issues, Americans across the spectrum broadly support human rights. A 2024 national survey by the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll found that 65% of Americans—including 60% of Republicans and 78% of Democrats—believe defending human rights globally should be a goal of U.S. foreign policy. And a widely cited survey from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center from 2020 shows that a majority of Americans across the political spectrum continue to see rights and freedoms as core to our national identity, concurring that “without our freedoms, America is nothing.”

We have much to build on, but we need to be clear-eyed about the crisis we face. The dismantling we are witnessing today has been made possible by both parties, across multiple administrations, failing to genuinely implement and anchor human rights in U.S. foreign policy. In practice, human rights were too often invoked and enforced selectively across countries. This inconsistency did not just undermine our credibility and the global institutions designed to uphold them, it hollowed out confidence in the application of human rights more broadly, laying the groundwork for their weakening not just abroad, but at home.

We must also confront the uncomfortable truth that the undermining of our rights and freedoms is not driven solely by a handful of politicians, but by the decision of many to look away, remain silent, rationalize, self-soothe, comply pre-emptively, capitulate, and dismiss what we are facing as politics external to our lives that will eventually self-correct.

If we are to prevent the full erosion of our most sacred principles and freedoms in the next three years, we need to lift our voices and build bridges via local, national, and transnational movements as well as agile informal networks. We need to find ways to talk to each other, to build on areas where we agree, and to collaborate across parties and movements. We need institutions and corporate America to understand that there is a price to pay for being complicit in undermining our institutions and rolling back our freedoms. We must identify what is more important than our fears and recognize that our principles—our commitment to justice and the dignity of others—are only as real as the actions we take to uphold them. We must keep going, and that is what The Alliance intends to do.