Trump administration to scale back annual human rights reports
Source: Yahoo! News/NBC News
Wed, August 6, 2025 at 11:21 PM EDT
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is scaling back the State Department’s annual Human Rights Report and placing a new focus on restrictions on freedom of expression by U.S. allies, as well as adversaries. The reports, which are widely anticipated and read around the world, have been composed by U.S. diplomats under congressional mandate for almost 50 years as a measure of countries’ adherence to internationally recognized human rights.
The report for last year, which normally would have been released in the spring, has already been delayed by months. “The 2024 Human Rights Report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability and is more responsive to the legislative mandates that underpin the report,” a senior State Department official said Wednesday in a briefing to reporters.
“We call out certain abuses that we think deserve highlighting, but just because we focus on one instance does not mean that we are not aware of other instances of human rights abuses,” the official added, noting that all 198 countries and territories were listed in the reports.
The delay follows dramatic cuts to the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, including the elimination of almost every office as part of the mass reorganization of the agency this year.
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-administration-scale-back-annual-032149164.html
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