KINGSTON, R.I. – Dec. 5, 2025 – Global human rights are in decline according to the findings of a recent study from researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. As governments around the world are increasingly using surveillance or legal pressure to discourage journalists and citizens from criticizing top officials, data shows that the number of state-committed atrocities reached an all-time high in 2022—the most recent data available.
In the United States, nearly two-thirds of surveyed Americans could not fully define “human rights” when asked, with one-quarter either incorrectly defining the term or giving unserious or uncertain responses. Also, the risk of atrocities occurring in the U.S. are quite high.
These findings, detailed in the 2025 Global RIghts Project (GRIP) report released today, notes continued troubling trends in inhumane treatment across the globe. This is the third annual human rights report, which draws on the world’s largest quantitative human rights dataset—the CIRIGHTS Data Project—and the CNVP work.
“We’ve come to two conclusions. One, human rights globally are in decline; the second is we know very little of what people know or want regarding human rights,” said Skip Mark, an associate political science professor and the URI Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies’ executive director. “We see this as a function of both rising atrocities and a lack of demand for human rights in public opinion surveys. Democracy works to improve human rights when citizens punish elected officials for violating those rights. So, if the demand for human rights is low, then leaders can violate human rights with fewer consequences. Low demand in the U.S. means that the costs of human rights violations right now are lower than they were in the past. Therefore, human rights violations will rise as a result.”
Prior GRIP reports graded countries based on a 100-point scale, and measured each country’s human rights based on annual data from the U.S. Department of State, Amnesty International and the United Nations, among others. This year’s report focuses on research that the University’s faculty and students conducted over the past year on multiple countries, including the United States and Iran, on a myriad of human rights, civil-military relations, and security issues, out of CNVP Security Forces, Rights & Society (SFRS) Lab.
This year’s report—co-authored by Mark and Roya Izadi, assistant director of the URI Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Security Forces, Rights and Society Lab’s director—states that societal militarization, or involvement of militaries in domestic tasks has been a rising global trend since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Armed forces meant to focus exclusively on external threats are becoming more involved in law enforcement, crowd control, and media control. In the United States, the use of the military in crowd control and supporting immigration policies has led to a decline in trust in the U.S military among individuals who have immigrant friends and colleagues according to a U.S survey fielded during the protests in Los Angeles in June and July of 2025.
Atrocities reaching record levels
The United States is at high risk for mass atrocities in the coming years, the report states. Recent events, including crackdowns on women’s rights, widespread use of U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement to engage in repression, attacks on free speech, attacks on education and restricting the right to protest factor into the country’s high-risk status. The report notes, however, that the U.S. judiciary will play an important role in limiting the government’s ability to commit mass atrocities.
Based on the research, Mark says the U.S. bears some responsibility for the rise in ongoing atrocities worldwide by reversing its commitment toward international human rights. He says countries can get away with committing violent acts against their own people because the U.S. has abandoned human rights as a foreign policy goal.
Using the latest CIRIGHTS data, researchers found that 2022 saw 47 countries commit brutality-based atrocities—widespread killings of more than 50 civilians by the state or by non-state actors working with the state and widespread violations of at torture, political imprisonment, or disappearances—the highest number seen over the last 40 years.
The report also notes 20 countries that committed atrocities for at least 16 years between 2000 and 2022. Four countries—Bangladesh, Pakistan, Venezuela and India—committed atrocities every single year during that time frame.
Leaders within oppressive countries, Mark says, are becoming savvy in continuing atrocities by limiting their scope. In other words, they have come to realize if they kill too many at once, their actions gain worldwide attention, he says.
“This is a sign that leaders are oppressing their people in different ways, and human rights groups are not adapting to those changes,” Mark said. “These are all to me red flags noting that we are likely to face real turbulent times in the future.”
Of those countries determined to have committed widespread extrajudicial killings, CIRIGHTS data shows that 99% of them engage in torture and violating the right to a fair trial, the report states.
Digital oppression by some countries
According to the report, many governments use either surveillance or legal pressure to steer journalists away from criticizing the state. Laws in Pakistan, for example—such as the Anti-Terrorist Act and the Defamation Ordinance—enabled authorities to arrest journalists, censor publications and punish the spread of materials deemed offensive. The report notes Pakistani authorities cite the need to prevent terrorism and blasphemy to legitimize censorship and surveillance.
Kuwait presents a more complex example, the report states. While citizens there have some degree of free expression, the country’s authorities monitor online activity, restrict certain websites, and use defamation and security laws to intimidate critics. Plus, online restrictions were justified under national unity and religious respect, the report states.
However, the report notes that repression adapts to new technologies. Most censorship two decades ago was focused on print and radio. Now, that logic is applied to social media, online news sites and encrypted communication. That, Mark says, can lead to dire consequences regarding human rights.
“We could be heading toward a world that looks like George Orwell’s 1984,” he said. “It’s not just about censorship. It’s about the complete erasure of privacy. The belief that everything you do is monitored and that if you are critical of the government, they will find ways to make your life miserable.”
Examining Iranian public attitudes
Iranian citizens who were surveyed in 2024 by Mark and Izadi for the GRIP report expressed significantly more negative views about the security forces primarily associated with internal repression. The 2,667 surveyed Iranians viewed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as more corrupt and violent than any of the other security forces in the country.
The surveyed individuals also said conservative attire significantly shapes perception. While conservative respondents prefer officers signaling ideological conformity, those supporting women’s rights strongly reject them, the report states.
Mark and Izadi also found that Iranian officials use failed movements within other countries to deter their own citizens from protesting in support of various causes. Izadi says autocratic societies, including Iran, used Syria, which fell into civil war from 2011 through last year, as a scenario to instill fear in citizens that democracy could fail if they choose to protest.
But, Izadi says, that strategy doesn’t work with Iranian citizens.
“People still want freedom and still want to go out and protest,” she said, “no matter if their governments are scaring them off. Nonviolent resistance is the key for change.”
U.S. not fully sure what “human rights” means
According to the report, only 34.2% of 3,333 U.S. citizens surveyed in 2025 by Mark and Izadi could say in their own words what the term “human rights” means. Correct answers included recognizing that rights apply to all human beings, a focus on dignity or a broad conception of many rights.
A total of 1,341 people, or 39.8%, partially defined “human rights,” providing statements such as “That all people should be treated equally” or “It means to be able to have free speech,” the report states. But, 875 total respondents either gave incorrect, non-serious or uncertain definitions.
Mark says the problem is twofold. One is either that human rights are not taught in schools or it is taught in school as a vague concept. Human rights, he says, are taught based on how the government views them—the Bill of Rights, for example—in lieu of how human rights are defined internationally.
“From an international standpoint, we in the U.S. could adopt better educational practices to improve teaching on human rights and the U.S.’s role in the creation of the human rights regime (systems of international law that protect and promote human rights),” Mark said. “Another way is teaching about the success stories of the U.S. intervening in other places and having a positive effect while also being realistic on how we have ignored human rights and the consequences of that.”
The report notes that survey respondents are strongly in support of courts being the primary enforcement mechanism for human rights, allowing for such rights to be protected. However, despite Democrats and liberal-identifying individuals being more likely in support of immigration rights regardless of status, Americans consistently prioritize protecting the rights of authorized immigrants over those unauthorized, according to the report.
“People do not know what human rights are and also whatever idea they have about human rights, they don’t want it for outgroups, such as immigrants,” Izadi said.
Compiling the report
The 2025 GRIP report was authored by Mark, Izadi, and Thupten Tendhar, director of the URI International Nonviolence Summer Institute. The CIRIGHTS Data Project is led by Mark and David Cingranelli of Binghamton University.
The project is also supported by the work of numerous undergraduate and graduate students. The students wrote the human rights spotlights featured in the report that shed light on topics such as incarceration, digital repression, and abuses. They also review international human rights reports and process data for the annual GRIP report.
On Friday, Dec. 12, the URI Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies will host a presentation of the 2025 report, along with presentations of the spotlight reports by their authors—Ava Palma, Amanda Queiroz, Isabella Pizzo, Zahra Kahn, Emma Arcieri, Alex Bolland, Breana Knight, Zach Hurwitz, James Tomb and Tiffany Morel. The event will be held in the Hope Room of the Robert J. Higgins ’67 Welcome Center, 45 Upper College Road on the Kingston Campus, starting at 2 p.m.
The report, including information about methodology, is available on the project website.
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