The NGO Amnesty International said Tuesday in its annual report that many leaders showed "cowardice" in 2025 when they should "resist" in the face of "predatory" heads of state like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu.
Published on: 04/21/2026 - 11:23
A call to resist “predatory” leaders. Faced with heads of state like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu, many leaders showed "cowardice" in 2025 when they should "resist", said Amnesty International on Tuesday April 21 in its annual report.
According to the NGO, these heads of state act in defiance of the international rules and organizations established after the Second World War, creating a world in which "war replaces diplomacy".
“In 2025, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, to name a few, have pursued a strategy of economic and political domination through destruction, repression and large-scale global violence,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard during a presentation of the report in London.
To display this X content (Twitter), it is necessary to authorize audience measurement and advertising cookies.
The United States engaged in "extrajudicial killings beyond its borders", attacked "completely illegally Venezuela and Iran" and threatened Greenland, denounces the text. At the same time, the Trump administration "has done everything it can to undermine years, decades of efforts" to defend women's rights, Agnès Callamard told AFP, stressing that the American and Russian presidents share a "deeply racist and patriarchal" worldview.
Israel continues "its genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza"
As for the Israeli government, it "continued its genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza, despite the October ceasefire agreement", without the international community taking "significant measures", accuses the Amnesty International report.
Faced with "these bullies and these looters", almost all international leaders "showed cowardice", particularly in Europe, deplores Agnès Callamard. “States, international organizations and civil society must reject the policy of conciliation at all costs and collectively resist these attacks,” urges the NGO.
According to Amnesty, international institutions have suffered the "worst" attacks since 1948, with American sanctions against certain magistrates and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) or the withdrawal of the United States from dozens of conventions such as that of the IPCC on the climate.
For the secretary general of the NGO, the current conflict in the Middle East illustrates the "slide towards contempt for the law" - from the "first illegal attacks carried out by the United States and Israel" to the "indiscriminate retaliations" of Iran.
Also read Exclusive: Iran, the massacred revolt
A conflict that arose after the Iranian authorities “massacred demonstrators in January 2026, in what was probably the deadliest repression of this type in decades,” adds the NGO.
Amnesty congratulates European dockworkers and opponents of ICE in the United States
The report also details human rights abuses in countries like Burma, torn by civil war since 2021, where the army has "used motorized paragliders to drop explosive munitions on villages, killing dozens of civilians."
He also cites Sudan, where the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) notably "committed massacres of civilians and sexual violence" during the siege of El-Facher, which lasted 18 months before the capture of the city in October.
Read alsoSudan: a UN mission describes El-Facher as “one of the epicenters of human suffering”
Rare glimmers of hope in this dark picture, according to Amnesty: the creation of a special tribunal for the war in Ukraine or the surrender of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, charged with crimes against humanity, to the ICC.
The NGO also welcomes the actions of dockers in Spain, France and Morocco to “disrupt the flow of weapons to Israel”, or the commitment of American citizens who opposed the operations of the ICE immigration police – sometimes at the risk of their lives.
Read alsoAt the port of Marseille-Fos, dockers refuse to load rifle parts intended for Israel
Agnès Callamard also hopes that the refusal of certain European countries to join the attacks launched against Iran by the United States and Israel heralds the start of a “great start”. And to warn: “We are at the very moment when everything could change, where everything that has been built over the last 80 years risks being destroyed.”
With AFP
Keywords associated with the article
The content you are trying to access does not exist or is no longer available.
