The State Department seal is seen on the briefing room lectern at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 2022.
Mandel Ngan/AP
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Mandel Ngan/AP
The State Department seal is seen on the briefing room lectern at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 2022.
Mandel Ngan/AP
The State Department released its long-awaited reports on international human rights Tuesday, and they drastically reduce the types of government repression and abuse that the United States under President Trump deems worthy of criticism.
The agency said the “streamlined” human rights reports adhere more closely to what’s required to be in them by law. But critics say the reduced content lets authoritarians off the hook.
The new report on El Salvador drops references to poor prison conditions — simply saying in the executive summary, “There were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses.” The same blanket assurance appears in the executive summary for Hungary, and gone is extensive documentation of government corruption there. Violations of the freedom to peacefully assemble in China are gone.
An NPR analysis of the documents shows this year’s reports are about one-third the length of last year’s. The reports on El Salvador and Moldova are more than 75% shorter.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. has compiled these reports on every country in the world, highlighting abuses such as restrictions on free assembly, unfair elections and punishment of minority groups. None of these categories are documented in the new reports.
Congress relies on the assessments to shape decisions on foreign aid and weapons sales. The reports are highly anticipated by diplomats, activists and journalists and have a reputation for being even-handed and comprehensive. But advocates say they fear the recent changes mean this year’s reports are taking a more political bent.
This year’s release was delayed for months while the State Department spent additional time deleting thousands of violations from drafts prepared in 2024 by foreign service officers and their contacts abroad.
President Trump telegraphed the new approach this spring on his visit to Saudi Arabia, long criticized for authoritarianism and abuse of women and children. Trump praised Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely thought to have ordered the torture and assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying Saudi Arabia’s success didn’t come from western nationbuilders giving, “lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.”
Traditionally, the Secretary of State presents the reports in a public briefing. This year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio chose not to schedule a dedicated event, despite having lauded the reports in the past when he served as a U.S. Senator. One of his former Senate colleagues criticized what he saw as Rubio’s new attitude toward the reports.
“I’ve regretted my vote for Senator Rubio,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and voted to confirm Rubio as Secretary of State. “When he was a member of the Senate, he used to stand up and support an American foreign policy based on promoting democracy and human rights. But ever since he was confirmed, he seems to have forgotten all that.”
Two-thirds of content cut from reports
Earlier this year, NPR obtained an internal State Department memo instructing employees editing the reports to remove whole categories of violations not “explicitly required by statute,” including gender-based violence and environmental justice. They were told to remove roughly two-thirds of the content in what officials there call an effort to conform to administration policies and make the reports “more readable.”
The deleted material includes issues widely regarded as fundamental rights under international law, such as the right to a fair public trial. In the memo, editors were ordered to remove references to diversity, equity, and inclusion, sexual violence against children and interference with privacy. References to restrictions on political participation and government corruption, violence against minorities and LGBTQ people and harassment of human rights organizations were to be removed.
“Massive shrinking” surprises advocates
Human rights advocates had braced for change under the Trump administration, but some say the scale of the cuts is still shocking.
“We expected women’s rights and minority rights to be cut out,” said Yaqui Wang, a longtime China Human rights researcher, most recently with Freedom House. “But even freedom of expression — the international understanding of what the U.S. considers as human rights, number one — has been cut. I’m just shocked.”
Freedom of expression for the press is still tracked in the new reports, but there’s no category covering expression for regular citizens.
Wang says that for human rights defenders and journalists, the reports are more than a record — they are a tool. They’re used to support asylum cases and they’re cited in court cases.
And the stripping down goes beyond removing entire categories. For categories that are statutorily required, the memo directed editors to cut down the number of examples of each violation to just one “illustrative incident,” regardless of how widespread the abuses were. In practice, this means a country with a pattern of press intimidation or torture is criticized for only one violation, erasing the broader scale of repression.
Amanda Klasing, the national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International USA, said the changes mean that the United States is going easy on violators.
“If you strip it down to one case, it makes it easier for governments — and particularly authoritarian governments — to say that, you know, this is just one case. Tell us a real problem,” Klasing said.
Van Hollen called the revisions “an irresponsible use of tax dollars” that deny both policy makers and the public “the unvarnished truth” about human rights situations abroad.
Political gatekeeper
The memo also orders that reports on 20 specific countries, including Canada, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine, be flagged for review by Samuel Samson, a political appointee in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Samson, who did not respond to NPR’s request for an interview, is a 2021 graduate of the University of Texas. His resume includes working at “The American Moment,” a conservative political organization whose mission, according to the CEO, is to place right-wing activists in “well-paying jobs where they will have influence.”
Van Hollen said the changes raise questions about the administration’s priorities at home.
“If the Trump administration’s going to be undermining human rights here,” he said, “they don’t want to have to report on what’s happening in other countries.”
Of note is the report on the United Kingdom. While in most country reports there is little mention of free speech, in the new U.K. report there is extensive documentation of government restrictions censoring “hate speech.” Vice President JD Vance has publicly raised the issue of infringements on expression outside abortion clinics in the U.K. and restrictions on prayer.
Legal obligations in question
The administration insists it remains committed to defending human rights. But Van Hollen argues the minimalist rewrite may no longer comply with the law, which requires a “full and complete” accounting of internationally recognized human rights.
“You don’t get to eliminate major categories of human rights here,” Van Hollen said, adding: “they don’t want to have to report on what’s happening in other countries.”
