International law has undergone “frontal attacks” of the United States since the return of President Donald Trump, denounces Amnesty International, which is alarmed in its annual report published on Tuesday of growing threats to the global human rights system.
“Forces of unprecedented magnitude want to end the ideal of human rights for all, seeking to destroy an international system forged in the blood and the sufferings of the Second world War and the Holocaust,” says Secretary general Agnès Callamard in the preface to the NGO report.
Amnesty is indignant at the “devastated” lives of millions of people in 2024, due to the conflicts and the abuses committed in the Middle East, in Sudan, Ukraine or the situation of women in Afghanistan.
The report above all accuses several of the most powerful states, such as the United States, Russia and China, of “undermining” the achievements of international law, as well as the fight against poverty and discrimination.
If these “irresponsible and punitive offensives” have been at work for several years, the return of American president Donald Trump to the White House “only accelerates” this process, denounces the NGO.
The first hundred days of his second mandate were “marked by a wave of frontal attacks against the obligation to account for fundamental rights, against international law and against the UN”, accuses Mme Callamard, who calls for “concerted resistance”.
The new government has frozen international aid, reduced its funding to several UN organizations and conducted criticized expulsions of prisoners to countries in Latin America.
“Powerful governments have repeatedly blocked attempts to act significantly to put an end to atrocities,” said the NGO in its report more widely.
It aims in particular the countries which challenged the decisions of the International Court of Justice against Israel, after the complaint of South Africa for “genocide” against the Palestinians.
-And those, like Hungary, who refuse to apply the mandates of judgments issued by the International Criminal Court against several Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The United States, the United Kingdom and many EU countries have publicly supported Israel’s actions in Gaza,” said Amnesty.
From now on, according to the NGO, the world attends “a live genocide” in the Palestinian territory, accusation firmly rejected by Israel.
“Indifference” for Sudan
The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023 with an unprecedented attack on Israel by commandos of Hamas infiltrated from Gaza, which resulted in the death of 1218 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data. Hamas has also removed 251 people, and 58 are still in the hands of the Islamist group, 34 of whom died, according to the Israeli army.
In response, Israel has promised to destroy Hamas, and leads a military offensive which left more than 52,000 dead, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The year 2024 is also marked by the conflict in Sudan between the regular army and the paramilitaries of the FSR. This war has led “to the greatest current crisis of forced (population) trips in the world”, with more than eleven million people forced to flee.
Famine also strikes millions of people, and this in “almost general indifference” of the rest of the world, the NGO is indignant.
On another part, Amnesty is concerned about attacks on the rights of women and LGBT +people. These violence and discrimination “flambé” in 2024, whether in conflicts, as in Sudan, but also in Afghanistan, where women and girls undergo a draconian hardening of the legislation under the authority of the Taliban.
Finally, the NGO points out the “urgent need” to regulate digital and artificial intelligence technologies to make them respectful of human rights, believing that “governments are increasingly abusing spy software and other monitoring tools” against their opponents.
