GLOBAL ANALYSIS Human rights abuses were widespread in 2023. States and armed groups frequently perpetrated unlawful attacks and killings in an increasing number of armed conflicts. Authorities across the world repressed dissent by imposing crackdowns on freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, using unlawful force against protesters, arbitrarily arresting and detaining human rights defenders, political opponents and other activists, and sometimes torturing and otherwise ill-treating them. Many states failed to take measures to fulfil people’s rights to food, health, education and a healthy environment, neglecting economic injustices and the climate crisis. Governments often treated refugees and migrants in abusive and racist ways. Deep-rooted discrimination against women, LGBTI people, Indigenous Peoples and racialized or religious communities marginalized these people and put them at disproportionate risk of violence and economic and social rights violations. Multinational corporate actors played roles in some of these abuses. The regional overviews elaborate on these trends at a regional level. This global analysis focuses on four issues that highlight some of these adverse trends at a global level: the treatment of civilians as expendable in armed conflict; the growing backlash against gender justice; the disproportionate impact of economic crises, climate change and environmental degradation on the most marginalized communities; and the threats of new and existing technologies, including generative artificial intelligence (AI). They represent, from Amnesty International’s perspective, critical challenges for human rights across the world in 2024 and beyond. States must take concerted action to tackle them and prevent further conflicts and crises emerging or deepening. TREATMENT OF CIVILIANS IN ARMED CONFLICT States and armed groups have treated civilians as expendable in armed conflicts, some of which are partly rooted in racial and ethnic discrimination. The current international system has generally been unable to take immediate and effective action to protect them, hamstrung at times by racist double standards and rivalries between powerful states. VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW The breaking and bending of international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, has had devastating consequences for civilians. In many conflicts, government forces have relied on long-range ground and air attacks using weapons with wide-area effects against populated areas. This has contributed significantly to mass civilian casualties and extensive destruction of homes and infrastructure. Some parties to conflicts have acted as though respecting international humanitarian law rules is optional. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has been marked by persistent war crimes; Russian forces have indiscriminately attacked populated areas and civilian energy and grain export infrastructure, tortured or otherwise ill-treated prisoners of war and caused vast environmental contamination through acts including the apparently deliberate destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Myanmar’s military and associated militias have conducted targeted attacks against civilians, as well as indiscriminate attacks, resulting in over 1,000 civilian deaths in 2023. Yet the Russian and Myanmar governments have rarely responded to reports 14 The State of the World’s Human Rights