Amnesty International has released its annual human rights report with a stark and sweeping assessment: the world is facing its most serious challenge to fundamental rights in decades, driven by powerful governments, corporations, and anti-rights movements that are dismantling the international legal order built in the aftermath of the Second World War.
In The State of the World's Human Rights 2026, a document spanning more than 400 pages and covering 144 countries, Secretary General Agnès Callamard described the current moment as qualitatively different from previous crises. "What marks this moment as fundamentally different is that we're no longer documenting erosion around the system's edges," she said. "This is a direct assault on the foundations of human rights and the international rules-based order by the most powerful actors for the purpose of control, impunity and profit." Callamard singled out the leaders of Israel, Russia, and the United States — Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump — as "voracious predators" whose conduct is emboldening governments worldwide to imitate abusive behaviour. The report documents Israeli military actions in Gaza that it characterises as war crimes and crimes against humanity, Russia's ongoing campaign against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, and US airstrikes it says amount to extrajudicial killings.
The report also details widening authoritarian practices across Asia, Africa, and even established democracies. In Pakistan, cybercrime and anti-terrorism laws have been used to detain journalists, activists, and opposition figures. The 27th Amendment to Pakistan's constitution is criticised for undermining judicial independence and granting immunity to senior military and presidential figures. PTI founder Imran Khan remains imprisoned on what Amnesty describes as politically motivated charges, while enforced disappearances in Balochistan and Sindh continue to go unaddressed. In India, national security laws are being used to suppress civil society. In the United Kingdom, police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests drew specific criticism. Technology is enabling repression on a global scale, with governments from Serbia to Kenya deploying AI-driven surveillance and spyware against activists and demonstrators. Belgium, too, was criticised: despite positioning itself as a human rights champion internationally, the report found that thousands of asylum seekers — including families with children — were denied shelter in breach of court orders, while prisons remain severely overcrowded.
Despite this bleak panorama, Amnesty identified grounds for cautious optimism. Millions of people took to the streets in 2025 to resist authoritarian policies. Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte now faces crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court, a process Amnesty cited as evidence that accountability remains possible. A growing number of states have joined South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and the Council of Europe has established a special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Civil society movements, legal challenges, and acts of civil disobedience — including European port workers who refused to load weapons shipments — are, the report argues, keeping resistance alive.
The report's central message is one of urgency. The international rules-based order, constructed painstakingly since 1945, is being openly challenged by those with the most power to uphold it. Amnesty is calling on governments — particularly those, like Belgium and Spain, that publicly champion human rights — to act consistently with their stated values and to resist the growing trend of appeasing, rather than confronting, those who flout international law.