Amnesty International (AI) warned that the world is on the verge of the collapse of international law, due to repeated human rights abuses and frequent attacks on armed conflicts by States and armed groups, such as in the current crisis in the Middle East.

The non-governmental organization, based in London, released its report ‘The state of human rights in the world’ of 2023. It lists a series of abuses in different countries, such as the repression of dissent, the illegitimate use of force against protesters or arbitrary arrests.

This NGO also warned that the collapse of the rule of law is likely to accelerate with the rapid advance of artificial intelligence (AI) that, together with the mastery of large technologies, runs the risk of a greater violation of people’s rights if the regulation is still lagging behind.

At a press conference in the British capital to present the document, the secretary general of Amnesty International, Agnés Callamard, recalled that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948 designed for “all of us, without exception,” but that now the world is attending an “erosion of the rule of law due to massive violations in the name of terrorism and security.”

Many powerful countries, he said, are abandoning “humanity and universality” enshrined in that declaration, signed under the slogan of “never again” due to the atrocities of World War II.

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“The Amnesty International report presents a bleak panorama of alarming repression of human rights and prolific violations of international norms, all in the midst of an ever-deepening global inequality, superpowers competing for supremacy and a growing climate crisis,” he said.

The Amnesty International report makes special mention of armed conflicts. It indicates that the violation of international humanitarian law, also known as “laws of war”, has had devastating consequences for the civilian population.

In many armed conflicts, government forces have launched ground and air attacks against populated areas. Using weapons with a wide range of action, while racism occupies a central place in some of these conflicts.

Specifically, the crisis in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is linked to an extreme form of racial discrimination, Amnesty points out.

For the organization, the Israeli system of separation from the Palestinian people is based on the fact that Israel oppresses and dominates the Palestinian population through territorial fragmentation, segregation and control, the set-aside of land and property and the denial of economic and social rights.

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In a conflict that shows no signs of diminishing, the evidence of war crimes continues to accumulate while the Israeli government mocks, in its opinion, international law in Gaza.

After the attacks perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, Israeli authorities responded with relentless air strikes against populated civilian areas that often annihilated entire families. Almost 1.9 million Palestinians were forcibly displaced. They restricted access to humanitarian aid that was desperately needed despite the growing famine in Gaza, he adds.

“Israel’s flagrant contempt for international law is aggravated by the failure of its allies to stop the indescribable shedding of civilian blood inflicted in Gaza.”

Many of those allies were the architects of that legal system after World War II,” said the secretary general.

Racial discrimination has also manifested itself in the responses to these conflicts, according to the report.

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Many governments have imposed illegitimate restrictions on solidarity protests with the Palestinian population, he added.

The governments of Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Poland and Switzerland – the document indicates – preventively banned this type of protest in 2023. Alleging risks to public order or national security that, in some cases, were based on racist stereotypes.

Dissidence was repressed through the adoption of strong measures against freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. While arbitrary detentions and imprisonments of human rights defenders, members of the political opposition and activists were documented. And his sometimes subjected to torture and other mistreatment.

According to the text, many States neglected economic injustices and the climate crisis. Governments often treated refugees and migrants in an abusive and racist way.

Among other things, AI denounces deeply rooted discrimination against women, LGBTI people and indigenous peoples. It emphasizes that multinational companies were part of abuses.

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Amnesty focuses its report on several global trends: the treatment of the civilian population in armed conflicts, the growing offensive against gender justice, the disproportionate impact of economic crises, climate change and environmental degradation, and the threats of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

In his opinion, these issues represent critical challenges for human rights around the world. They demand a concerted response from the States to face them and avoid new conflicts or that existing ones are aggravated.