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“The Slippery Slope of Authoritarianism – Using Human Rights to Anticipate and Prevent Conflict” (Geneva Academy, November 2025), by Emma Bapt and Adam Day, examines how rising authoritarian practices function as a structural risk multiplier for human rights deterioration and violent conflict.  

Building on the authors’ earlier work, the paper argues that early warning and conflict prevention efforts within the United Nations remain hampered by institutional silos and under-utilization of the UN human rights system, which produces some of the most detailed and actionable risk signals. The study develops an analytical framework linking concentrations of political and economic power to ten recurrent human-rights-based precursors of conflict. Drawing on diverse UN sources and four case studies (Nicaragua, Türkiye, Hungary and Mozambique) it shows how authoritarian centralization interacts with political exclusion, shrinking civic space, and ESCR-related grievances to heighten conflict risks. The authors highlight policy options for anticipating and responding to these risks, with relevance for ongoing UN processes such as national prevention strategies, the 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review and debates on R2P. Moreover, the paper underscores that strengthening human rights, across both civil-political and economic-social domains, is essential to prevent states from sliding down the “slippery slope” from authoritarian drift into violent conflict.  

For more information about the briefing paper, click here.