According to media reports, Gulf countries and individuals are arming and funding extremist opposition groups responsible for atrocities, while Iran and Hezbollah back the abusive government of Bashar al-Assad.
Despite this failure in Syria, the doctrine of a global “responsibility to protect” vulnerable people from mass atrocities, endorsed by the world's governments in 2005, was strengthened by the reaction to the prospect of mass atrocities in several African countries, though much more needs to be done to avoid large-scale killing there, Human Rights Watch said.
In the Central African Republic and South Sudan, the African Union, France, the US and the UN reinforced international missions in an effort to prevent the slaughter of civilians.
Pressure from allies and an increased UN peacekeeping presence convinced Rwanda to stop its military support for the latest in a succession of rebel groups committing atrocities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
In another major trend, a notable number of governments paid lip service to democracy while mocking the rights central to democratic rule, said the report.
But people did not take such assaults on democracy sitting down, with widespread protest in many countries including Turkey, Thailand, and Ukraine.
Snowden's revelations and reporting on the impact of targeted killings in Yemen and Pakistan have undermined US efforts to hide human rights abuses spawned in the struggle against terrorism.
That has led to intense public scrutiny of global mass electronic surveillance and of targeted killings by aerial drones.
While the exposure of abusive US counterterrorism practices has not stopped them, there is new international pressure for change, Human Rights Watch said.
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