A detailed report, comprising incidents of human rights violations across 144 countries, had been released a day earlier by the parent organisation, Amnesty International.

The global report noted that the world was on the brink of a perilous new era, driven by powerful states’ corporations and anti-rights movements’ assaults on multilateralism, international law and human rights.

It warned that states, international bodies, and civil society must reject the politics of appeasement.

“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 through unlawful wars and brazen economic blackmail,” Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard said.

Addressing stakeholders and other participants at the presentation of the report in Abuja, Amnesty International Nigeria Country Director, Isa Sanusi, detailed how state actors hound, arrest, detain and prosecute citizens for expressing their views on government policies and related matters.

He also decried the shrinking space for civil actors and dissenting voices in several countries, especially Nigeria. Sanusi expressed dismay at the level at which non-state actors, especially terrorists and other criminals, abduct for ransom and kill innocent people.

He condemned how countries with superior military power, including the United States, Russia, and Israel, attack others, kill thousands, displace millions and destroy infrastructure.

He warned: “If we go into a world of free-for-all, we are going back to the free 1940s, where any country that is powerful can do whatever, it likes. I hope we will not go back to that.”

“This year’s report particularly paid closer attention to key issues, and one of them is predatory behaviour that is escalating across the world. The example of predatory behaviours includes Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which has continued despite a ceasefire in October 2025. While at the same time, Israel has been continuing to expand settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“The United States has committed over 150 extrajudicial executions by bombing boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The US and Israel agreed on an unlawful use of force against Iran in violation of the UN Charter. Iran has targeted civilian infrastructure in the Gulf and in Israel. Israel has scaled up its attacks on Lebanon, as we know what is going on in Lebanon, the daily bombings, and this has endangered millions and millions of lives,” he stated.

He accused Russia of committing crimes against humanity with its war in Ukraine. Besides, he said the Taliban’s “predatory policies” against Afghan women intensified in 2025, with further bans on education, listening to music, with other ‘barbaric’ measures enacted or implemented.

Speaking on abuses on the African continent, he said Sudan-supported forces seized control of al-Pasha in the northern part of Darfur, where women, children, and civilian infrastructure were destroyed by ISIS. This was followed by massive killings, rape, and other sexual violence, he noted further.

“Rwandan armed forces and the Rwandan-backed armed group captured the cities of Goma and Okavo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, and lawfully killed civilians and subjected detainees to torture and ill-treatment in inhuman conditions. Another very devastating blow to the rules-based world that we know is that the Trump administration of the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) staff.”

Amnesty International highlighted instances of human rights abuses in Nigeria, including non-state actors abducting citizens for ransom and killing those whose families could not raise funds for their freedom. Between January and the first three weeks of April 2026, over 1,000 Nigerians had been kidnapped by insurgents and bandits, Sanusi said.

The organisation accused the police and military of helping the government shrink civil space by tracking and arresting dissenting voices, while killing innocent citizens in the course of fighting terrorists. For instance, it detailed instances when agents of the Nigerian government arrested journalists, activists and others, charged and arbitrarily detained them.

“Security and law enforcement agents used excessive force to disperse peaceful protesters, killing several people and arbitrarily arresting others. Authorities failed to protect girls from abductions and people from killings by gunmen. Military air strike unlawfully targeted civilians. Armed group Boko Haram continued to kill civilians,” it noted.

Some of the cases of human rights abuses  in Nigeria, as documented by Amnesty International, include the arrest and detention of activist Omoyele Sowore for calling the former inspector-general of police, Kayode Egbetokun ‘illegal IGP”, the extension of service year for a youth corps member, Ushie Uguamaye, known as Raye, after she voiced concerns over rising cost of living in Nigeria; the arrest, detention and arraignment of activist chinedu Agu on criminal defamation charges over his opinion articles criticising Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma.

The list includes the arrest of Kano-based journalists, Buhari Abba and Ismail Auwal, over a report deemed critical of the Kano State Commissioner for Information, Ibrahim Waiya. “They were detained for several hours before being released, and there was no record of an ongoing trial.”

Similarly, the human rights institution posited that the authorities failed to fulfil their obligations to prevent attacks on individuals and communities, to safeguard their rights to life and physical integrity, and to ensure justice by investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the violence.

It recalled the killing of 16 hunters heading for Kano from Rivers in Edo State, coordinated attacks on Plateau, Zamfara, Benue, Borno, Katsina, Kwara, Kaduna communities, among others.

Human rights abuses, according to Amnesty International, include the forced evictions by state governments, namely Lagos and Kano, following the demolition of residents’ homes.