The rise of populist leaders such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin poses a “dangerous threat” to human rights that could encourage global abuses around the world, Human Rights Watch has warned in its annual report.
Accusing the US president-elect of a campaign for office that fomented hatred and intolerance, the group also singled out “strongman” leaders in Russia, Turkey the Philippines and China, accusing them of substituting their own authority in place of rule of law and accountable government.
“These converging trends, bolstered by propaganda operations that denigrate legal standards and disdain factual analysis, directly challenge the laws and institutions that promote dignity, tolerance, and equality,” Human Rights Watch said.
The organisation’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, argued a “new generation” of authoritarian populists was seeking to overturn the concept of human rights protections.
“Donald Trump’s successful campaign for the US presidency was a vivid illustration of this politics of intolerance,” Roth wrote in an introduction to the Human Rights Watch world report 2017.
“Sometimes overtly, sometimes through code and indirection, he spoke to many Americans’ discontent with economic stagnation and an increasingly multicultural society in a way that breached basic principles of dignity and equality. He stereotyped migrants, vilified refugees, attacked a judge for his Mexican ancestry, mocked a journalist with disabilities, dismissed multiple allegations of sexual assault, and pledged to roll back women’s ability to control their own fertility.”
Roth also trained his fire on autocratic rule in Venezuela, where the government was accused of launching military and police raids that led to widespread allegations of abuse, including extrajudicial executions and arbitrary deportations. The HRW director said the “Bolivarian revolution” ushered in by Hugo Chávez had become an economic disaster for the worst-off segments of society.
In Africa, said Roth, supposed models of authoritarian development like Ethiopia and Rwanda were, on closer examination, plagued by “government-imposed suffering”. He cited allegations that the Ethiopian government forcibly moved rural famers into villages to make room for major agricultural projects and the Rwandan government’s rounding-up of street vendors and beggars.
In South Sudan, said the study, the civil war continued with serious abuses against civilians by government forces and opposition fighters. Referring to Sudan’s northern neighbour, the report’s authors said: “Sudan’s human rights record remains abysmal in 2016, with continuing attacks on civilians by government forces in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states; repression of civil society groups and independent media; and widespread arbitrary detentions of activists, students, and protesters.”
Separately, the UN high commissioner for human rights called on Friday for business leaders converging on Davos for next week’s World Economic Forum to stand up for human rights and prevent rights violations.
“We begin the year full of anxiety about the state of the world: the deeply disturbing increase in divisive behaviour and policies, and outright hatred; the attacks against fundamental human rights, particularly of those already vulnerable; and the continued widespread failure to ensure fair access to resources, prosperity and economic security for all,” said Zeid Raad al-Hussein.
Companies needed to take “a clear, unequivocal stance” that did not tolerate links to human rights abuses anywhere in their operations and supply chains, said Zeid. He noted that many firms had already begun taking steps to prevent and mitigate human rights abuses, in line with the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.