Latin America is present process considered one of its most profound human rights crises in a long time. The area’s civic area is shrinking quickly, from mass surveillance and arbitrary arrests to political repression, enforced disappearances and impunity for state violence.
The 2025 State of the World’s Human Rights report, launched by Amnesty Worldwide, lays naked the magnitude of the problem. Seven international locations – Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba and El Salvador – are on the epicentre of this authoritarian surge.
Donald Trump’s return to the White Home in January has solely deepened the issue. In a separate report revealed in the identical week, Amnesty argues that Trump’s nationalist rhetoric and coverage reversals have emboldened strongman leaders. These have undercut worldwide accountability and accelerated rights violations throughout the hemisphere.
Listed here are the international locations the place the assault on human rights is being felt most acutely.
1. Haiti
Nowhere has the collapse in human rights been extra seen than in Haiti. By the tip of 2024, greater than 700,000 folks – half of them youngsters – had been internally displaced as a consequence of spiralling gang violence and state failure.
Legal organisations routinely engaged in killings, sexual violence and assaults on hospitals and faculties. A December 2024 bloodbath in Cité Soleil, a densely populated a part of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, noticed not less than 207 folks executed by the Wharf Jérémie gang.
The justice system has all however ceased to perform. In the meantime, deportations of Haitians from the US and neighbouring Dominican Republic has surged.
In keeping with Amnesty, practically 200,000 folks have been returned with out due course of in 2024 alone. Trump’s crackdown on migration, framed as vital for border safety, has accelerated these mass removals.
2. Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, has refined authoritarianism into an environment friendly machine of repression. Greater than 5,000 civil society teams, non-public universities and media shops have been closed since 2018. This included 1,500 from January to September 2024 alone.
Over 400 critics have been stripped of nationality since 2023 and dozens of journalists have been forcibly disappeared or jailed. The authorized standing of a whole lot of evangelical teams has additionally been revoked.
In 2024, the federal government criminalised dissent to the purpose the place complete sectors of civil society have vanished. Indigenous communities, in the meantime, confronted displacement and armed assaults from pro-government militias, with little worldwide response.
Daniel Ortega speaks throughout an occasion in Caracas, Venezuela, in January 2025.
Ronald Pena R. / EPA
3. Venezuela
Venezuela stays mired in repression. A presidential election in July 2024, which was stolen by Nicolás Maduro, was adopted by the arbitrary detention and torture of protesters – together with youngsters. Impartial journalists have been arrested and NGOs threatened with closure.
Many Venezuelans subsequently fled the nation. Persecutions and despair on the election outcomes noticed 20,000 folks migrate northwards via the jungle of the Darién Hole in September 2024 alone, a 70% enhance on the earlier month.
In actuality, the numbers are most likely a lot larger. A ballot following the election indicated that 43% of these remaining within the nation have been contemplating emigrating, however official knowledge has not been made out there. Greater than 7.8 million residents have left Venezuela over the previous ten years, with round 28 million folks nonetheless residing there.
In June 2023, the Worldwide Legal Courtroom resumed its investigation into the Maduro regime for alleged crimes in opposition to humanity. However Venezuela’s authorities continues to hinder justice. With Trump’s administration disinterested in multilateral mechanisms, efforts to revive democracy face steeper odds.
4. Mexico
Mexico’s public safety has turn into dangerously militarised. A constitutional modification in September 2024, a number of days earlier than the tip of the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration, positioned the Nationwide Guard below navy management. This has enabled widespread abuses together with extrajudicial killings. 9 human rights defenders and 4 journalists have been killed in 2024 alone.
López Obrador’s administration undermined press freedom at residence. It additionally failed to guard these looking for asylum. And with Trump again in workplace, deportations from the US to Mexico have elevated. Returnees are sometimes positioned liable to cartel violence and exploitation.
Members of the Mexican Nationwide Guard perform an operation in a market in Chilpancingo, Mexico, in March 2025.
Jose Luis de la Cruz / EPA
5. Colombia
Colombia suffered Latin America’s longest operating insurgency, lasting over 50 years. Regardless of the nation’s sturdy institutional frameworks, peace stays elusive. In 2024, over 195,000 folks have been forcibly confined by armed teams, and landmines proceed to hazard greater than 600,000 civilians.
Youngster recruitment, sexual violence and focused killings of former combatants from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) insurgent group have surged. In the meantime, progress on implementing the 2016 peace accord stays gradual.
Investigations into military-perpetrated extrajudicial killings are ongoing, however face budgetary constraints and political pushback. Trump’s withdrawal of US assist for transitional justice mechanisms has additional weakened worldwide backing for Colombia’s fragile reconciliation efforts.
6. Cuba
The Cuban authorities are persevering with to suppress dissent via arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and censorship. Over 100 folks have been arrested for protesting in 2024, with many compelled into self-incriminating video confessions. Impartial media and activists have been topic to fixed surveillance and harassment.
Amid financial collapse, greater than 18% of the inhabitants has fled the island in two years. These mass migrations usually lead to perilous journeys and widespread household separations. The financial disaster has been exacerbated by US sanctions reimposed and intensified below Trump.
7. El Salvador
President Nayib Bukele’s mannequin of mass incarceration continues to draw international consideration. Almost 84,000 folks have been arrested since 2022 below a state of emergency that suspends primary rights and authorized ensures.
Surveillance, arbitrary detentions and public humiliation of detainees have turn into routine. Trump’s vocal admiration of Bukele’s “tough on crime” stance has lent worldwide legitimacy to this harmful strategy.
Donald Trump meets with Nayib Bukele within the Oval Workplace on the White Home in April 14.
Ken Cedeno / EPA
Trump’s return to the White Home has intensified human rights setbacks throughout Latin America. His withdrawal from human rights and local weather agreements has emboldened authoritarian regimes to suppress dissent and speed up insurance policies to take advantage of sources with out concern of US stress or accountability.
Latin American migrants within the US have additionally confronted a resurgence of mass deportations. Rhetoric portraying migrants as criminals has fuelled xenophobia and enabled sweeping immigration raids and coverage rollbacks. Sanctuary cities like Chicago have been focused and authorized protections for undocumented residents eroded.
Latin America’s present trajectory suggests a drift not simply towards repression, however a normalisation of state violence. Whereas native resistance stays sturdy, significantly amongst grassroots activists and civil society, worldwide solidarity has been weakened by geopolitical shifts.
The area dangers cementing a brand new period of authoritarian resilience – one during which the defence of human rights isn’t just harmful however futile.
