THE HUMAN COST OF A WORLD WITHOUT RULES / THE FINANCIAL TIMES EDITORIAL

The human cost of a world without rules

International humanitarian law and the rights of civilians are being eroded

The editorial board

A mother with her two-year-old child at a refugee camp in Gaza City in July. There is a waning adherence to the laws of war and children invariably suffer the most © Jehad Alshrafi/AP

The photo of a severely malnourished boy in Gaza became a defining image of 2025. 

Other shocking events have taken place further from cameras or scrutiny. 

They include reported atrocities by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces against civilians in Sudan’s western Darfur. 

Then there is the lethal strike on two survivors of a US attack on an alleged drugs boat in the Caribbean — video of which US defence secretary Pete Hegseth refuses to release but which may constitute a war crime.

All these incidents highlight the erosion of the human rights laws and rules of war designed to protect civilians that democracies had sought to enforce, however patchily, since 1945. 

Atrocities and appalling human rights abuses have still proliferated through those decades. 

But the US retreat from the world and from the post-1945 pledges makes lawlessness all the more prevalent.

America’s record was partisan before Donald Trump’s return to office. 

The Biden administration — along with many western allies — failed for too long to press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to curb the brutal tactics of Israeli forces against Palestinians in Gaza, as they responded to Hamas’s horrific October 7 2023 attack that had directly targeted civilians in Israel.

But Trump’s second term has brought a striking retreat from a foreign policy that espoused a defence of values, however inconsistently it was sometimes enforced, to one of ruthless transactionalism. 

The US state department’s annual human rights reports in August laid bare the new approach, omitting previous critical sections on many basic freedoms. 

Its much-shortened report on Israel, the West Bank and Gaza failed to mention the humanitarian crisis and death toll in the strip. 

The reports were notably easy on Trump allies such as El Salvador and Saudi Arabia.

The waning adherence to the laws of war has seen allegations of starvation being used as a tactic, and not just in Gaza and Sudan. 

Children invariably suffer the most. 

Recent data suggests 2025 will surpass 2024 as the deadliest and most violent year for children in conflict since UN monitoring began in 2005. 

This year is on course, too, to be the deadliest for humanitarian workers — with government militaries often the perpetrators.

Yet as well as international aid and human rights groups, there are others still prepared to battle to protect civilians. 

The International Court of Justice, which adjudicates on treaty breaches such as the 1948 Genocide Convention, and the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals for war crimes, are under immense pressure. 

Trump’s US has imposed sanctions on ICC prosecutors and judges over their involvement in a case against Israel that included an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. 

But the international courts are still managing to operate, have grown in stature, and are emerging as a bulwark of a rules-based system.

A major ICJ hearing begins in January on Gambia’s case alleging that Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya violated the Genocide Convention. 

It will also set a path for South Africa’s subsequent case alleging that Israeli forces violated the convention in Gaza.

A surprising number of US lawmakers from both parties, meanwhile, have demanded investigations not just into September’s “double-tap” boat strike but the legality of using US military forces against drug smuggling.

There were also glimpses of concern among developing nations, which had mostly failed to join western condemnation of Russia’s invasion, over recent US peace proposals that suggested recognition of some Russian-seized territories in Ukraine. 

An African Union summit with the EU in November pledged to uphold sovereignty and territorial integrity and called for a “just” peace.

Smaller global south countries understand as well as Europe’s and Asia’s wealthier democracies the dangers of the might-is-right world that Trump seems to embrace. 

But, for now, that is the global order, however unthinkable it might have seemed just a decade ago.