US is at high risk for mass atrocities
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.
The report, including information about methodology, is
available on the
project website.
