Amnesty International: 2026 Annual Report “The State of Human Rights in the World”
The 2026 edition of Amnesty International’s annual report has been published. The report “The State of the World’s Human Rights” analyses the national, regional and global developments with regards to human rights themes. It documents human rights concerns during 2025 in 144 countries, connecting global and regional issues and looking to the future, underlining the fact that this report “moves beyond warning of imminent breakdown to documenting a collapse now underway”. Specifically, the report highlights how states have undermined the international rules-based system, identifies trends regarding armed conflicts, repression of dissent, discrimination, economic and climate injustice, the interruption of humanitarian aid and the misuse of technology.
Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard has stated “We are confronting the most challenging moment of our age. Humanity is under attack from transnational anti-rights movements and predatory governments determined to assert their dominance through unlawful wars and brazen economic blackmail,” and “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.”
Concerning international law, the Amnesty International reports and details the pervasive crimes under international law and mounting attacks on the international justice system. Amongst other things, the report mentions Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, its system of apartheid in the occupied West Bank, including East Gerusalem and settler violence. With regards to the United States of America, Amnesty documents over 150 extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean and the Pacific, its act of aggression against Venezuela in January 2026. Lastly, Russia has continued its war of aggression against Ukraine, intensifying its aerial attacks on critical civilian infrastructure.
Furthermore, in 2025, the world witnessed a proliferation of attacks on civil society and social movements, with sustained efforts to silence and disempower human rights defenders, organizations and dissenters. For example, in Nepal and Tanzania’s authorities had unlawfully used lethal force to repress protests expressing political and socio-economic grievances, alongside the governments of Afghanistan, China, Egypt, India, Kenya, the USA and Venezuela.