Washington D.C. — Human Rights First condemns the far-reaching cuts and politically driven revisions the Trump administration has reportedly made to the State Department’s soon to be released annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. These changes strip out vital information that has long been part of these reports, including whether a country conducts free and fair elections, respects all fundamental freedoms, engages in corruption, or allows discrimination against its citizens, including women, ethnic and racial minorities, indigenous persons, and LGBTQI+ minorities. Moreover, contrary to congressional intent, the reports on particular countries, including those on El Salvador, Russia, and Israel, appear to dramatically skew the facts to favor the administration’s political agenda, according to media reporting.
Since their creation in the late 1970s, the Human Rights Reports have become one of the most comprehensive and detailed records of the human rights situation in every country and territory in the world. As Congress originally intended, they provide crucial information that informs U.S. decision-making on foreign and security assistance as well as asylum and refugee claims around the world. They are also an integral component of U.S. diplomacy and decision-making and have long informed the American public and the international community, as the most widely read publications issued by the State Department. Due to their detail, many other governments, international institutions, academic researchers, businesses and media organizations have come to rely on them.
“The changes made by the Trump administration to the State Department’s annual Human Rights Reports represent a radical break from their original purpose which has long enjoyed bipartisan support – to objectively and even-handedly describe the human rights situation in every country and territory in the world,” said Human Rights First President and CEO Uzra Zeya. “This severely undermines their credibility and value in guiding U.S. decision-making on a wide range of critical foreign policy issues. Purging mention of elections, corruption, and global human rights abuses against LGBTQI+ persons, persons with disabilities, women and girls, refugees and other vulnerable groups runs counter to American interests and values and makes Americans abroad less safe and informed.”
Human Rights First urges the Congress to raise its concerns about these reports and to enact statutory requirements to restore the information that has been eliminated so that the reports can continue to be a reliable source for all that have come to rely on them.