BRITAIN is failing its moral commitments as human rights face the most dangerous moment in generations, Amnesty International has warned.

Highlighting a new era of “predatory” power, the organisation’s annual report reveals that powerful governments, corporations and anti-rights movements are accelerating attacks on international law and fundamental freedoms.

Amnesty warns that the world is moving beyond gradual erosion into systemic breakdown, driven by states acting with increasing impunity.

Published today, the report looks at the US and Israel’s unlawful warmongering, Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine, Taliban repression of women in Afghanistan and other abuses.

It also documents a global assault on civil society, with governments including Britain using counterterrorism laws to criminalise peaceful protest and deploying spyware and AI surveillance to suppress dissent.

Major economies, including Britain, have also cut international aid, despite rising global need, while increasing military spending.

Amnesty warns that Britain is increasingly reflecting, rather than resisting, these global trends, insisting that it must not enable potential violations of international law through its military partnerships.

Amnesty secretary-general Agnes Callamard said: “We are confronting the most challenging moment of our age.

“Humanity is under attack from transnational anti-rights movements and predatory governments determined to assert their dominance.

“What marks this moment as fundamentally different is that we’re no longer documenting erosion around the system’s edges.

“This is a direct assault on the foundations of human rights and the international rules-based order by the most powerful actors for the purpose of control, impunity and profit.”

Amnesty UK chief executive Kerry Moscogiuri said: “This is the moment the UK’s moral mettle is being tested.

“In these desperate times, we need strong leadership to defend human rights and international law, but right now we are falling short.

“It is not good enough to criminalise peaceful protesters while ignoring the injustice they are speaking out against.”

Ms Moscogiuri said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “knows what is happening on his watch,” adding: “He knows powerful states are tearing up international law in pursuit of power and profit and that the UK has not challenged this with the clarity and consistency required.

“You cannot claim to defend the rule of law while undermining it in practice, whether through arms sales or allowing UK bases to be used in conflicts where international law is being violated.

“That is not moral leadership, it is complicity.”

Ms Moscogiuri said the “hour has come,” adding: “This is exactly the moment human rights were created for when populism is rising, when people are struggling to afford the essentials, when asylum-seekers and migrants are scapegoated, when war and displacement are everywhere and when some lives are treated as worth less than others.

“The question now is whether the Prime Minister will rise to meet the challenge of our lifetime or be remembered for standing by when it mattered most.”