Authoritarian influence in multilateral institutions is growing rapidly and poses a serious threat to democratic and human rights principles. Repressive governments have worked to undermine mechanisms that are meant to ensure accountability for human rights abuses and to transform the United Nations, its related bodies, and other international institutions into fora for mutual praise. Both the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin are working to subvert human rights norms on the international stage, peddle favorable narratives, and oppose resolutions examining their poor human rights records. Democratic societies must rally behind the global human rights system and ensure that it remains capable of assisting activists and victims around the world.
In a new report for the International Forum for Democratic Studies, Dr. Rana Siu Inboden, a senior fellow with the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at The University of Texas at Austin, examines how authoritarian regimes exploit multilateral institutions to further their illiberal goals and how democracies can work together to uphold the system and hold abusers accountable.