Source: Amnesty International –
Throughout 2025, voracious predators stalked through our global commons, hulking hunters plundering unjust trophies. Political leaders like Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, among many others, carried out their conquests for economic and political domination through destruction, suppression and violence on a massive scale.
As Amnesty International has long warned, a global environment where primitive ferocity could flourish has been long in the making. But in 2025, accelerants were recklessly poured over dry kindling, as sharp U-turns were taken away from the international order that had been imagined out of the ashes of the Holocaust and the utter destruction of world wars, and constructed slowly and painfully, albeit insufficiently, over these past 80 years.
Yet rather than confront the predators, in 2025 most governments opted for appeasement, including most European states. Some sought even to imitate the predator. Others ducked for cover under their shadow. A mere handful chose to stand up to them.
One firebreak after another was breached: through complicity in, or silence about, the commissions of genocide and crimes against humanity; and through imposition of crippling sanctions against those working to deliver justice. That’s how 2025 will be remembered: for its bullies and predators; for the pouring of the politics of appeasement onto burning betrayals of international obligations; for self-defeatism; for states playing with a fire that threatens now to burn us all and scorch the future too, for generations to come.