Making History and Advancing Accountability for Human Rights Abuse in the US

Joel R. Pruce

Director of Applied Research and Learning

University of Dayton Human Rights Center

October 9, 2026

Today was an historic day for international human rights. 

Sometimes history produces cause to celebrate and often history gives us days we’d sooner forget. But history-making is not a spectator sport.

We awoke to the news that Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Pillay’s life and work narrate the evolution of human rights over the past forty years. A South African lawyer of Tamil descent, she fought against Apartheid and later served on the country’s High Court. Pillay was selected as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and then on the International Criminal Court in its early years before being appointed as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Most recently, she chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry on Occupied Palestinian Territory, which concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. At every stage, Pillay advanced new norms and ideas, broadened the scope of who is considered human under international law, and took unpopular stances at critical moments. The award signals both the enormous strides made in the manufacture of human rights machinery over the last generation, while also quietly gesturing in the subtext for the need to reaffirm their purpose and utility in the face of existential challenges.

By late afternoon, the rumors and threats of US action against the International Criminal Court manifested in a package of sanctions aimed to severely constrain the Court’s financial viability. These moves were telegraphed over the summer by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who today declared the intention to “[cripple] its ability to operate against us.” Attacks on the ICC are intended to shield the Administration and its allies, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in perpetuating the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

It was only a few weeks ago that the world gathered for the annual UN General Assembly in New York City, where the US government continued to escalate its defiance of international law and its antagonism toward the ideas and institutions that hold the global community together. President Trump again threatened the annihilation of a whole society from the dais, in an expression of utter contempt for the very premise of the United Nations – “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” President Trump and Mr. Rubio argue that the UN and the ICC threaten US sovereignty. But it’s not sovereignty they seek to protect—it’s impunity and lawlessness.

Human rights advocates in the US are accustomed to operating with the assumption of hypocrisy: leaders announce their support for international norms while ignoring those same norms whenever it suits them. Under the Trump administration, pretense is gone. Outright antipathy is on the menu. But the bluster barely masks the anxious isolationism of a deeply unpopular ruling party petrified by the possibility of having to atone for its criminal acts.

Since the beginning of the second Trump term, US advocacy groups have been documenting human rights violations committed by the government and using international human rights mechanisms to build pressure for an outcome the Administration most fears: accountability at home. These efforts are reaching a crescendo with the approach of the UN Universal Periodic Review, when the US government is scheduled to appear to report on its human rights record, as all sovereign countries must. The Trump administration chose neither to submit a report nor to appear when the review was first scheduled a year ago. The UN Human Rights Council offered a rescheduled session on November 10, 2026 but all signs point to another no-show—marking an infamous milestone as the first country to ever fail to cooperate in twenty years of this multilateral process.

But the US human rights movement refuses to allow the Trump administration a free pass and will not look the other way as the United States ignores its international obligations. Over the past two years, advocates, attorneys, and impacted communities submitted over 200 reports to the Human Rights Council as evidence of the spiraling conditions under this presidency, with escalations in the last year including the mass and illegal detention and deportation scheme that violates the human rights of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees; the extrajudicial killings of over 223 people in the Caribbean and East Pacific under the false claim in the name of countering “narcoterrorism”; and the expansion of the “terrorism” framework and vast surveillance infrastructure used to repress expression of dissent and target civil society and marginalized communities and chill human rights work. Now, a coalition of over 60 U.S.-based human rights organizations have sent letters to the Council leadership and its members, as well as the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Volker Türk, requesting urgent action to investigate and monitor the deteriorating human rights situation in the United States. 

The Trump administration is afraid of accountability and panicked by the idea that they should ever have to answer to any authority for their abuse and cruelty. Their broadside against the international human rights infrastructure is a sign of weakness, not of strength. A regime does not attack laws and courts if it knows itself to be operating within acceptable bounds. These moves signal vulnerability and forecast the decline of a politics of dehumanization.

The world Navi Pillay fought for and the vision encoded in what she represented are alive today, but very much on their heels. Carrying her torch and honoring her legacy demands that we shore-up global institutions and remain tireless in our defense of human dignity. Pillay’s lasting impact reminds us that the history of human rights is ours to write. 

* Author is grateful to Nadia Ben-Youssef for edits