Human Rights Reports Exemplify Trump Administration’s Destructive, Hypocritical Stance on Rights
Washington, D.C. — Human Rights First deeply opposes the Trump administration’s dramatic cuts and politically driven revisions to the Department of State’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (human rights reports) for 2024, which were released yesterday.
“Gutting and rewriting the State Department’s annual human rights reports reflects this administration’s abandonment of core values integral to U.S. national security and prosperity,” said Uzra Zeya, Human Rights First’s President and CEO. “On top of purging human rights capacity within the State Department to an unprecedented degree, Secretary Marco Rubio has sought to weaponize and distort human rights policy tools to reward rights-abusing partners or perceived victims and target political opponents or critics. Attacking democratic U.S. allies for so-called free speech violations while seeking to imprison law-abiding college students at home for peaceful expression against U.S. foreign policy exemplify this administration’s destructive and hypocritical approach to human rights. At the same time, expunging all mention of gender-based violence, LGBTQI+ persons, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups from these reports is a radical move out of step with the American people, international human rights norms, and decades of past practice, including the first Trump administration.”
“Such changes undermine the historic credibility of these reports and their purpose in informing key U.S. government decisions on issues such as security assistance, foreign aid, and whether to provide protection to people fleeing human rights abuses. They also undercut the courageous efforts of political activists, human rights defenders, and others seeking to improve conditions in their home countries,” Zeya concluded.
U.S. law enacted over four decades ago mandates that the State Department provide annual reports on “the observance of and respect for internationally recognized human rights” in every country around the world. It is widely agreed that “internationally recognized human rights” include those articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which the U.S. had a key role in drafting and which draws on the core rights in the United States’ own founding documents) and treaties to which the U.S. is a party such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s most recent reports eliminate information on a wide range of these rights, including the right to peaceful assembly, the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom of movement, the right to not be returned to a country where one would suffer torture or persecution, the right to non-discrimination (including for women, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous persons, LGBTQI+ people, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized groups), and the right to participate in one’s government.
They also exclude information on key governance issues such as corruption. Such reporting has been included in these reports for many years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and its absence means that Congress and others will have far from the complete picture they need to make informed and responsible decisions about U.S. policy and its implementation. It will have particularly negative consequences for asylum seekers seeking to prove the risks they may face in their home countries.
The reports also noticeably skew the reporting on particular countries where the Trump administration has aligned political interests. For instance, in the reports on El Salvador and Hungary, the State Department concludes that there are no “credible reports of significant human rights issues.” At the same time these reports assert that there have been no changes in the human rights situation in both countries since 2023, when the reports on those same countries itemized a wide range of significant issues. Likewise, the reports on key U.S. allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia withhold or downplay accounts of abuses there, compared to recent years. Strikingly, the 2024 reports give Hungary a clean bill of health on human rights, while concluding that the human rights situations in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have worsened due to issues relating to alleged restrictions on freedom of expression and acts of antisemitism. While some of these concerns may be valid, they are given disproportionate attention relative to the many other serious abuses occurring elsewhere around the world. The 2024 reports also elevate attention to alleged abuses by governments in South Africa and Brazil for which the Trump administration has expressed particular antipathy.
Congress should call the Trump administration to account for its politically driven changes that undermine the State Department’s human rights reports and pass legislation to restore the comprehensiveness and integrity for which these reports have come to be known.
