The United Nations leader warned Monday (February 23, 2026) that “the rule of force” was spreading, as the powerful trample on international law and wield artificial intelligence and other technologies to attack human rights.
“Human rights are under a full-scale attack around the world,” Antonio Guterres told the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s annual session in Geneva. “The rule of law is being outmuscled by the rule of force.”
The U.N. secretary-general stressed that “this assault is not coming from the shadows, or by surprise. It is happening in plain sight and often led by those who hold the greatest power”.
He did not mention specific situations, although he did voice outrage at Russia’s war in Ukraine, where he said more than 15,000 civilians had been killed in four years of violence. “It is more than past time to end the bloodshed,” he said. Mr. Guterres also highlighted the “blatant violations of human rights, human dignity and international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.
He charged that the trajectory in the conflict-torn territories under Israeli occupation was “stark, clear and purposeful: the two-state solution is being stripped away in broad daylight”. “The international community cannot allow it to happen,” he insisted.
Rights attacked ‘deliberately, strategically
In his final in-person address to the U.N.’s top rights body, Mr. Guterres said the worst conflict-hit areas were not the only places where rights were eroding. “Around the world, human rights are being pushed back deliberately, strategically and sometimes proudly,” he said.
“We are living in a world where mass suffering is excused away, where humans are used as bargaining chips, where international law is treated as a mere inconvenience.” U.N. rights chief Volker Turk echoed the concerns.
In a “deeply worrying trend”, he warned that “domination and supremacy are making a comeback”. “A fierce competition for power, control, and resources is playing out on the world stage at a rate and intensity unseen for the past 80 years,” he warned.
“The use of force to resolve disputes between and within countries is becoming normalised.” Mr. Turk highlighted how “the gears of global power are shifting”, calling for people to band together to protect rights and create “a strong counterbalance to the top-down, autocratic trends we see today”.
‘Democracies eroding’
While the U.N. says that conflicts are multiplying, impunity is spreading, and humanitarian needs are exploding, its traditional top donor, Washington, has dramatically slashed its foreign aid spending since President Donald Trump returned to power last year. Other major donors have followed.
“When human rights fall, everything else tumbles,” Mr. Guterres warned. The crisis of respect for human rights “mirrors and magnifies every other global fracture”, he said, pointing out that “inequalities are widening at staggering speed.
At the same time, “climate chaos is accelerating, and technology, especially artificial intelligence, is increasingly being used in ways that suppress rights, deepen inequality and expose marginalised people to new forms of discrimination both online and offline”, he warned.
Mr. Turk, meanwhile, lambasted leaders, without naming them, who seem to believe “that they are above the law, and above the U.N. Charter”.
“They claim exceptional status, exceptional danger or exceptional moral judgement to pursue their own agenda at any cost,” he said, pointing to how “some weaponise their economic leverage”. “They spread disinformation to distract, silence and marginalise,” he charged.
What is clear, Mr. Guterres warned, was that “across every front, those who are already vulnerable are being pushed further to the margins”. “Democracies eroding, migrants harassed, arrested, and expelled with total disregard for their human rights and their humanity. Refugees scapegoated,” he pointed out, also highlighting how “LGBTIQ+ communities [are] vilified, minorities and indigenous peoples targeted, religious communities attacked”.
Mr. Guterres, who is to step down this year after a decade at the U.N. helm, called for urgent action to reverse the trend. “Do not let power write a new rulebook in which the vulnerable have no rights and the powerful have no limits,” he said.
Published – February 23, 2026 10:34 pm IST
