The Trump Administration’s Partisan Global Human Rights Report Will Have ‘Devastating Consequences’

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What an observer says about a situation often reveals more about themselves than the object of their commentary.

Such is the case with the latest annual global human rights report issued by the State Department earlier this month, which reveals far more about the US’s changing priorities than anything about the actual state of human rights and democracy in the world.

Previous iterations of this report, mandated by Congress since 1978, aimed to provide an objective assessment of a country’s performance against the benchmark of standards in the main international human rights conventions.

This year’s report is a vastly scaled-back affair, with entire categories of abuse watered down or erased, and countries’ reports cut by dozens of pages in many cases.

It is also nakedly partisan in its assessments, giving countries perceived to enjoy friendly relations with the Trump administration far softer treatment than those with which it is perceived to be in conflict.  

According to the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a coalition of former State Department officials opposed to the Trump administration’s foreign assistance cuts and many of its other policies, “This is not an oversight; it is deliberate erasure.”

Friends With Benefits

Amongst the countries coming in for softer treatment are El Salvador – whose authorities have cooperated closely with the Trump administration in receiving deported migrants from the US into the notoriously abusive CECOT prison, and Hungary, whose strongman leader, Viktor Orban, has formed a strong bond with Trump, and whose autocratic rule is seen as a role model for right wing conservatives in America.

For example, the 2023 report noted El Salvador’s overcrowded prisons and reports of “arbitrary killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention,” and more.

The 2024 report found “there were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses”, celebrated that “reports of gang violence remained at historic low” thanks to mass arrests, and even commended the government for its “credible steps” to identify and punish officials guilty of abuses.

By contrast, elsewhere in Latin America, Brazil, whose leader, Lula da Silva, has repeatedly clashed with Trump over the treatment of former President and Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, comes in for scathing criticism.

The 2024 report asserts that the human rights situation there has declined, with the government allegedly undermining freedom of speech and democratic debate, disproportionately targeting supporters of Bolsonaro, and failing to tackle reported abuses credibly.

It is no coincidence that Brazil-US relations are at their lowest level in decades, in the wake of Trump’s decision to levy 50% tariffs on Brazil and impose sanctions on its main judges as punishment for Brazil’s prosecution of Bolsonaro for attempting to overturn the result of the 2022 election. Ironically, the effect has been to boost popular support for Lula and accelerate Brazil’s strategic pivot towards China.

Likewise, this year’s executive summary for Hungary notes, “there were no significant changes” and “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses”. Last year’s report included extensive mention of “serious government corruption” and restrictions on media freedom.  

While Hungary gets off lightly, the 2024 report goes in harder on several of Washington’s more traditional European allies, such as France, Germany and the UK, countries accused by Vice President JD Vance of censorship and suppression of free speech.

For example, the section on the United Kingdom declares the “human rights situation worsened,” citing “credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression; and crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism”. It adds that the government only “sometimes” took credible steps to address human rights abuses, with prosecution and punishment “inconsistent”.

The section on Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is vastly changed from last year. Where the 2023 report was 76 pages long, the 2024 version is eight. It has plenty to say about Hamas’s detention and ill-treatment of Israeli hostages, but expresses no concern about Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, including allegations of war crimes, or about the dire humanitarian situation there. It repeats the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and makes no reference to illegal settlements or settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

In line with Trump’s tendency to treat Russia and Ukraine equally, this year’s report has almost as much to say about alleged human rights violations committed by Ukrainian authorities, as about Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine.

Moreover, while the 2023 report was careful to acknowledge that Ukraine’s alleged abuses were “not comparable to the scope of Russia’s abuses”, this qualification was not included in the 2024 version.

Rights Are Not Equal Under Trump

As for different categories of human rights, one of the most controversial changes is the elimination of the standalone section on women’s rights in each country report, which used to cover discrimination, gender-based violence, rape and domestic violence – a move that former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, Geeta Rao Gupta, warned signals to repressive governments worldwide that “women’s human rights do not matter”.

According to Laura Thornton, a global democracy expert, in a recent article for the Hill publication, the report also downplays all the rights and freedoms associated with democracy.

“Freedoms of assembly, association and personal expression, right to a fair trial, and freedom to participate in the political process might be mentioned in passing in various segments of the country chapter but no longer have their own, in-depth sections as in the past. Further, assessments of elections, political parties and participation, corruption, and treatment of human rights and democracy organisations have ceased.”

The report also no longer references LGBTQ+ issues – for example, no longer mentioning Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Law and the impact it has had on the country’s LGBTQ community since President Yoweri Museveni signed it in 2023.

International Consequences

The devastating consequences of these changes are hard to overstate. Even as it rankled countries to be judged by America, a nation hardly possessing its own perfect human rights record, the annual reports were generally regarded as a broadly objective, baseline assessment of the human rights situation around the world.

Both government officials and human rights activists alike would anxiously await publication each year – in the former’s case, to find out if they were on America’s “naughty” or “nice” list, and might be in the firing line for American lecturing, diplomatic pressure or even sanctions; in the latter’s case, to seek validation and reinforcement for their efforts to improve human rights in their own countries.

The human rights assessments directly affected how America conducted its relations with third countries – for example, the warmth of its dealings, the conditions under which it was willing to sell arms, or cooperate on other economic, political or security matters.

Other nations also benefited from the reports. For example, it was standard practice for British diplomats to use the reports to complement their own analyses of the internal situation in countries where they were posted, and even draw on them, when advising the Home Office on asylum decisions.

Now, the report is essentially useless. It is an empty exercise, completely unrelated to the cause of human rights itself. It serves only to reassure countries on the “nice” list, that they can get away with repression provided they stay on good terms with Donald Trump, while suggesting to countries under censure that if they want the assessments to improve they need to work harder to suck up to the administration. Human Rights defenders will know they can no longer count on US backing for their valiant efforts.

Alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent decision to gut State Department’s human rights bureau and fire most of its staff, the diminished and distorted human rights report is definitive proof that, under Trump, the US no longer aspires to be the world’s champion of human rights and democracy.

In fact, the US risks reducing itself to the same moral plane, if not egregious standard of abuse, as countries like Iran, Cuba, and China. It accuses them of failing to adhere to core democratic standards, of targeting political opponents, of mistreating vulnerable minorities, and of cynically seeking membership of the UN Human Rights Council for political purposes, not to play their part in advancing human rights and freedoms around the world, but to avoid scrutiny of their own behaviour.

But the Trump administration is itself now downplaying certain human rights standards as no longer as important as others, and certain categories of people as no longer as deserving of protection.

The administration has started adopting their language that certain human rights are no longer universal, or even legitimate, but are “woke” western concepts being pushed by far left progressives. 

Under Trump, human rights and democracy are no longer unimpeachable aspects of US international diplomacy, but political tools to be weaponised for personal or political ends.  

There are no core values at stake. It’s all just part of a “great game”.

The consequences are not merely international. Why would the Trump administration want to downplay certain human rights categories internationally, if not to open up space to violate them domestically?  

As Thornton chillingly concludes in her article for the Hill: “While it is focused internationally, this year’s human rights report paints a picture of who we have become. Which rights we choose to include or omit and whose rights we think are important (and whose are not) reflect a shift in our values and priorities. If fair elections and women’s lives do not matter elsewhere, why would they matter here? Americans should not be complacent — if we don’t respect rights elsewhere, we don’t respect them anywhere, including at home.”