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Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!

— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor

Are human rights a romantic concept of liberal democracies that have ultimately proved insufficient for saving them from the return of authoritarian governance? The experience of Central and Eastern Europe suggests something more complex. It shows us that although human rights are not the silver bullet against democratic backsliding, they are one of the most important legal tools in the toolkit of democratic resilience.

Modern autocrats play their game by using democratic institutions to unbalance free political competition and seize power by combining nationalist, anti-liberal, and populist agendas, often adding a picture of a dominant leader into the recipe. What mostly puts the effectiveness of human rights mechanisms to the test under their rule is that the destruction of the rule of law and democracy is not happening in the classical coercive way but actually through the law and its selective interpretation. Thus, the rule of law is replaced by the rule by law.

Weaponizing rights

Current politics and legislative initiatives across the region are a playbook example of how democratic erosion in practice increasingly happens through formally lawful but substantively corrosive reforms. This broader pattern is referred to as autocratic legalism, when governments rely on formal legal frameworks to legitimize measures that gradually and systematically dismantle democratic checks and balances. Such a strategy is visible also in their approach to human rights guarantees.

Instead of rejecting human rights outright, modern authoritarian, or authoritarian leaning, governments corrupt the human rights system. They weaponize rights to serve their interests by reinterpreting them, narrowing their content, or selectively invoking rights in such ways that can consequently weaken institutional checks and challenge international oversight. They exploit the interpretative margins that law always leaves. Does this mean that new autocrats are within the margin of subjective interpretation when they change human rights narratives?

The selective invocation of certain rights in opposition to others challenges the balancing exercise. Take the example of the recent criminal code reforms in Slovakia, which are meant to dismantle the independent, and effective, Whistleblowers Protection Office and which have been justified through the language of restoring legality and protecting the rights of the accused. The broader political and institutional context signalled that the language of rights was being selectively mobilized to undermine anti-corruption enforcement and accountability mechanisms.

The controversial judicial reform in Romania between 2017 and 2019, accompanied by mass protests, included attempts to amend criminal laws and weaken judicial independence and anti-corruption mechanisms officially to protect defendants’ rights, uphold the presumption of innocence, and correct “abuses” by prosecutors. A similar strategy was at play in Hungary with the 2021 “child protection” law, which was presented as necessary to protect children’s rights and parental authority. In reality, this move restricted LGBTQ+ rights, a narrative which is continuously used in the country.

Migration is another key field in this regard. The right to seek asylum has been portrayed as a security threat all over the region. The limitation of access to asylum procedures is defended as the protection of the rights of citizens and state sovereignty, even if it means violating international refugee law. These arguments are also increasingly used by countries that have a much stronger democratic record. In 2025, nine European states addressed an open letter asking for a change in the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights in the area of migration, especially challenging the evolving case law regarding the expulsion of “criminal foreign nationals” and “irregular migration”. The initiative, known as the Letter of Nine, formally claimed the aim to restore the right balance. However, its language spoke to arguments of safety, security, and national sovereignty.

Another indirect attack on human rights has occurred through the targeting of independent judicial actors who authoritatively interpret and enforce them. During gradual democratic backsliding, the courts are either directly restructured according to the preferences of political leadership and/or their independence is tested by labelling them as elitists and biased in favour of foreign influence. The collapse of judicial independence in Poland, which resulted in the introduction of the disciplinary system targeting judges and political appointments, is a showcase example.

Political will

It would be naïve to believe that human rights mechanisms alone can neutralize abuses of power. These mechanisms face legitimate criticism for being slow, politically constrained and strongly dependent on state compliance. As we have already seen, human rights systems do not always manage to stop the authoritarian drift of determined governments.

In Georgia, as in many other countries in the region, the government went ahead and adopted a controversial “foreign influence” law in 2024 despite strong criticism from the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the Venice Commission. Under the argument of ensuring transparency and protecting national sovereignty, the law directly targeted free civil society and freedom of association. The case of Georgia illustrates how neither EU conditionality nor the external human rights mechanisms succeeded at stopping the democratic regression despite early warning. That is, however, not because rights are weak but because their effectiveness depends on political will. It is also worth remembering that their enforcement is fragile. While rights are strongest when understood as legal standards, they become weak once the political will is gone.

Yet if we only focus on the limits of human rights, we overlook their deeper function in the resilience of democracy. It is true that experience has taught us that enforcement can fall short. However, the existence of powerful legal standards influences political contestation and slows down the process of institutional erosion. This was the case regarding the rule of law improvement in Poland after the systematic review and criticism of regional and international mechanisms. Thus, human rights matter more than ever today. This is not because they always win and protect democracy or right each wrong, but because they slow down possible institutional destruction. In the age of the new authoritarianism, human rights play three key roles in supporting democratic resilience.

Firstly, human rights mechanisms are a cornerstone of democratic resilience. They often serve as an early warning signal when democratic institutions are beginning to erode. While new autocratic leaders rarely attack human rights in direct or openly declared ways, the cumulative effects of their policies and legislation can significantly restrict the enjoyment of rights, especially for particular groups or in specific sectors. Measures targeting civil society organizations across the region illustrate this dynamic. Such actions not only create a chilling effect that discourages civic engagement, but also undermine the protection and exercise of the rights these organizations seek to defend.

The example of Bosnia and Herzegovina is instructive. There, the Constitutional Court suspended a Russian-style “foreign agents” law adopted in Republika Srpska, finding that it failed to meet a pressing social need, was not necessary in a democratic society, and conflicted with the European Convention on Human Rights. This case demonstrates how human rights standards can provide domestic courts with important legal tools to challenge legislation that narrows democratic space.

At the same time, international human rights standards empower other domestic actors, including civil society, human rights organizations and democratic opposition, to challenge democratic regression. The European Convention on Human Rights has played a major role in empowering Russian human rights organizations, activists and lawyers who have continuously challenged restrictive laws and policies in Strasbourg, particularly before the country’s expulsion from the Council of Europe. Judgments such as Kabaliya and Others, Lashmankin and Others, and Ecodefence and Others are among the numerous examples in which the Court found that Russian laws and administrative practices violated the freedoms of assembly and association. Together, these rulings not only exposed the restrictive impact of authoritarian policies on fundamental freedoms, but also helped to consolidate robust regional standards for the protection of civic space.

Secondly, supranational human rights scrutiny becomes crucial when legal reforms are used to weaken the rule of law. When domestic safeguards fail – often as a result of eroded democratic institutions – external review can serve as an important structural corrective. Contemporary autocratic leaders, however, frequently seek to discredit such oversight by portraying it as a form of “western imposition” or undue foreign interference. Hungary’s aforementioned “child protection” law illustrates this tension. The legislation has drawn sustained criticism from international human rights bodies and has led to infringement proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Although the case remains pending, the Advocate General Tamara Ćapeta has argued in her opinion that, by calling into question the equality of LGBTQ+ persons, Budapest has interfered with several fundamental rights protected by the EU Charter, including the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sex and sexual orientation, respect for private and family life, freedom of expression and information, and the right to human dignity. Her analysis further suggests that Hungary has moved significantly away from the standards expected of a constitutional democracy.

Continue reading the article by Zuzana Pavlíčková in our latest issue When human rights end. It’s completely free to unlock!

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) — Internship with the Peace and Development Research Theme (Aug 2026–Jan 2027) — A full-time internship at SIPRI’s office in Solna, Stockholm, offering hands-on experience at the intersection of climate, security, and global policy research. Interns support research and drafting for major publications, contribute to policy and media outreach, and gain insight into the operational and strategic management of a leading international think tank.