On the International Human Rights Day, Antanina Maslyka, ARTICLE 19’s Regional Director for Europe, reflects on what the current moment means for the human rights movement – and the radical change needed to confront the global assault on our rights and freedoms.
This year, Human Rights Day brings a sense of déjà vu, and there is nothing comforting about it. Increasingly, the world feels like 1938 all over again: multilateral institutions are wobbling, collective security systems are eroding, and democratic coalitions are struggling to respond effectively to blatant war crimes and grave human rights violations.
In the meantime, governments are steadily normalising the idea that ‘might’ once again determines ‘right’. As a result, harassment of journalists and activists is on the rise; new forms of online censorship heavily limit freedom of expression; and authorities too often choose crackdowns over public dialogue, labelling legitimate criticism as tactics of ‘disturbing public order’. The architecture built to prevent the worst chapters of the 20th century from repeating is cracking – sometimes under the weight of neglect, sometimes under deliberate assault.
Yet, those of us working in human rights wake up every day and continue doing our work. Still believing we can change the trajectory of rising populism and polarisation and undo the wrongs. Is that naive? Perhaps. But resignation has never protected a single freedom.
Across Europe, where my work is focused – but really everywhere – attacks on human rights have become so routine that silence is now treated as complicity.
This is how democracy dies: quietly, gradually, in the spaces where people decide it is ‘not the right moment to speak,’ or ‘not our place to intervene’.
In the meantime, the language of human rights is being hollowed out – stripped of concrete meaning and sometimes reduced to a few safe, overplayed phrases that can make it feel distant and out of touch with the realities of the people on the ground. At the same time, international systems built to safeguard these very rights are increasingly dismissed as irrelevant, elitist, or both.
I do not speak from a lecturing position. We are all searching for the right words, as we try to respond to pervasive violence, repression, and the shrinking of hope.
So, where does that leave us? Can we still be ‘civil’ in the face of this reality? Or is it time to embrace a more ‘uncivil’, pointed honesty? The kind that admits how much is at stake, how deeply the ground is shifting, and how poorly equipped our traditional toolkits are for today’s crises?
I, of course, cannot predict the future of human rights. But the very question of ‘Can human rights survive and still mean something?’ forces the clarity we have been avoiding. My answer is yes. Not because human rights are in fashion, or ideologically convenient, but because they are the only framework that treats every human being as an end rather than a means. Without that, everything else collapses.
But we need to wake up. All of us.
The choice to abstain or to not engage usually comes with an assumption that the world will keep functioning as it is now. It will not. Not unless we relearn how to defend the core values we claim to cherish, and to defend them loudly, uncomfortably, and yes, sometimes impolitely. We need to reflect as much as we need to act. A willingness to examine what has not worked, where we have been too timid, and how often we have mistaken following the rules for actually standing up for what matters.
In the ‘war of narratives’ we must show that human rights belong to no government, no interest group, no political agenda. Their legitimacy and importance come from lived experiences, from the people who risk the most to defend them. We should listen to their brave voices, amplify them, rely on their knowledge, and get out of their way when needed.
I believe that human rights can survive this moment but not if we continue pretending that nothing has changed. We cannot just remain complacent about the old ways of doing things. The world is shifting faster than our frameworks, and the gap is widening. It is time to step out of our comfort zones, rethink our methods, and take seriously the urgency of now.
You do not defend human rights and dignity by whispering and asking bullies for permission.
You defend it by refusing the silence and indifference that autocracies and dictatorships depend on.
As Aldous Huxley wrote, ‘Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning. Truth and beauty can’t.’ Human rights were never meant to keep the system’s wheels running smoothly. They were meant to stop them when they crush people.
On this Human Rights Day, let’s choose truth over comfort. And then act like we mean it.