Democracy and fundamental rights – can they survive? 

We start with human rights lawyer Reed Brody, who has had an interesting career, to say the least.  

Way back in the 1980s, as a newly qualified lawyer working in New York, he found himself in Nicaragua, learning about the United States backed Contra organisation, which was carrying out human rights violations in an attempt to de-stabilise the Sandinista government, led by Daniel Ortega.  

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Inside Geneva: democratic rights and freedoms at a crossroads?

This content was published on Apr 1, 2025 The world is changing fast. Are democracy and human rights under threat?

Read more: Inside Geneva: democratic rights and freedoms at a crossroads?

At that time US officials sometimes referred to Latin America as “Uncle Sam’s backyard”. The US was deeply suspicious of governments on the left, and undertook numerous operations to undermine them, in Chile, or Bolivia as well as Nicaragua.  

Brody tells Inside Geneva that, like many young Americans at the time, he was enthusiastic about Ortega’s Sandinistas, with their promise of free healthcare, free education and more. It seemed a fairer dream than the so often celebrated American version. 

But Washington was not enthusiastic; it viewed the Sandinistas as too leftwing, perhaps even loyal to the Soviet Union. In Nicaragua, Brody found himself hearing, and witnessing, evidence of horrific violations – murder, rape, the destruction of entire villages – carried out by the Contras. Ronald Reagan, US president at the time, was supporting the Contras with money, and weapons. 

Brody collected his evidence, and published it in the New York Times. The scandal rocked the administration, and shone a light on Washington’s willingness to support appalling atrocities, as long as they furthered US interests. 

Full circle 

Fast forward 40 years, and Brody finds himself in a somewhat ironic position. In recent years Ortega has lost the support of many of his traditional Sandinista colleagues, and has instead consolidated power among a few handpicked loyalists, including his wife, who he has appointed co-president. Repression of political opposition is rife, and the UN human rights council has set up a group of experts to investigate – Brody among them. 

“Ortega purged the Sandinista movement” says Brody. “He made deals with right-wing politicians. He came back into office in 2007, and has not given up power since. For me, there’s this poetic arc to my career. That’s why I wanted to do this.” 

But, he adds, “it’s no satisfaction” to see a man who raised the hopes of his people now become their persecutor. 

When, during the current human rights council session, Brody and his colleagues published their report, Nicaragua announced it would leave the council.

As we know, Donald Trump’s administration had already beaten Nicaragua to the exit, so, having got Brody into our Inside Geneva studio, I had to ask him, based on his long career of defending human rights, what he made of the situation in the United States. What about the students being arrested on the streets, what about the mass deportations, what about the threats to friendly neighbours in Canada or Greenland? 

A coup 

He doesn’t mince his words. “Donald Trump is unravelling the constitution” he tells me. “I believe we could describe this as a coup d’état that’s happening. The separation of powers is being eviscerated. I think we’re living in a very dangerous moment in the United States.” 

What dismays him most is that he is now seeing in the US familiar patterns that he has witnessed in authoritarian regimes all over the world. “For the first time in my life, I am listening on the radio, on TV, to Americans talking to the press and refusing to use their names because they are afraid of retaliation. That’s the kind of thing that happens in Russia, that happens in Nicaragua.” 

But perhaps also for the first time in his life, Brody is not sure what the response from human rights lawyers like himself should be. He sees his country divided, with polarisation being fuelled by new “information platforms”.  

Pointing out that when he was a young man there were “for better or worse” just a few TV channels from which everyone got their information, Brody says “I look at what my son and his friends are listening to and watching, and I realise that there’s no common debate anymore. Mentally we’re separated. We come together in different places, and the algorithms, you know, weaponise that.” 

Alternative realities 

Which brings me neatly to our second in-depth interview on Inside Geneva this week.  Regular listeners may remember that during the big election year of 2024, we interviewed Alberto Fernandez of Gibaja, head of Digitalisation and Democracy at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), about the possible threats to the democratic process from social media and artificial intelligence.  

Hearteningly, he thinks we did quite well last year. Nearly all the elections passed off peacefully, and appeared fair. Despite Elon Musk’s vocal and financial support for Trump, it is “not possible” Gibaja says, to conclude that Musk’s influence decisively swayed the outcome of the US elections. 

But that does not mean Gibaja thinks all is well. Instead, he points to a much longer “drip-drip erosion” of “one of the fundamental tenets of democracy, which is having a shared reality.” 

“Once you don’t have a shared reality” he tells Inside Geneva, “it becomes relatively easy to weaponise that part of society that is losing touch with reality. And then for those of us who believe that we share our reality, a reality based on facts and science, we are on the losing side. Because it’s very difficult to speak about the problems of society with somebody that doesn’t seem to be living on the same planet.” 

Gibaja suggests that elements of the Republican party, backed by an oversight resistant tech industry, have actively supported this erosion. For the politicians it supports the creation of an easily manipulable voter group, for the industry it permits unfettered expansion and marketing.   

But Gibaja has a warning for the tech giants who so loyally stood behind Trump at his inauguration. Their profits, he points out, are primarily derived from selling products, not ideas.  

All of us, he says, should be concerned about the creation of alternative realities, and the marketing of political narratives or ideologies which have no basis in fact. 

‘‘It is fine for Instagram or for TikTok to realise that I am into biking and then try to sell me bikes,” he explains. “And if I get into bike influencers, then they will feed me with more bikes and more publicity about bikes and so on. That’s fine. That’s a product. {They can} manipulate me to sell me that. That has happened throughout history. But that’s not fine with political ideas.” 

Two fascinating interviews, addressing some of the biggest questions of our time. Listen in full on Inside Geneva. 

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