Amnesty International South Africa has demanded urgent systemic reform, enhanced international solidarity and robust accountability measures to counter a “predatory” geopolitical order that it says is eroding human rights protection nationwide. 

Launching the organisation’s annual report 'The State of the World’s Human Rights 2025/26', Amnesty International warned that global human rights are under severe threat, with 2025 acting as a “watershed year” that saw the rise of international lawlessness, conflict and “cowardice” by States.

Speaking during the report’s launch, Amnesty International secretary general Dr Agnès Callamard described 2025 as the year in which a “predatory” international order, where powerful actors act with impunity, emerged.

“… instead, we are reporting the advent of what we foresaw. For here we are, with voracious predators stalking across our global commons. Plundering unjust atrocities, assaulting the very foundations of universal human rights and the multilateral system, serial breaches of their obligation for the sake of control, profit, and impunity,” she stated.

The report notes a global backlash against human rights, with authoritarian laws, policies, and practices targeting freedom of expression and peaceful assembly becoming increasingly common.

Callamard accused countries, particularly in Europe, of complacency and “cowardice” in the face of widespread abuses, arguing that the multilateral system was under assault but not yet dead.

She described the spiralling conflict in the Middle East as a direct product of this descent into lawlessness, characterising it as open warfare against civilians.

“It started with the unlawful US and Israeli attack in violation of the UN Charter,” Callamard said, adding that arguments of self-defence could not be invoked to justify the current scale of violence, while Israel has intensified attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, resulting in widespread civilian harm and danger to millions.

She said the conflict is endangering the lives and health of millions of people across the region, exacerbating already catastrophic suffering.

Callamard accused US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of accelerating a worldwide surge in human rights abuses, fuelling an “unprecedented breakdown of international law”.

She described a deliberate effort by these leaders to turn international justice into a battleground and pointed to the US and Russia attacking the International Criminal Court (ICC) to evade accountability.

She noted that the US had imposed sanctions against ICC judges and prosecutors simply for "doing their job," while also using its veto power to protect allies.

Predatory leaders had, she claimed, "paralysed" the United Nations Security Council through the "unconscionable abuse of their veto power".

She argued that a "new predatory system" was emerging, where powerful States not only commit grave violations but also work to dismantle the international mechanisms meant to hold them accountable.