(Washington, DC) – The Trump administration’s omission of key sections and manipulation of sure international locations’ rights abuses degrade and politicize the 2025 US State Department human rights report, Human Rights Watch stated immediately. By undermining the credibility of the report, the administration places human rights defenders in danger, weakens protections for asylum seekers, and undercuts the worldwide combat in opposition to authoritarianism.
On August 12, 2025, the State Division launched its “Nation Stories on Human Rights Practices” masking the 12 months 2024. The report omits a number of classes of rights violations that had been normal in previous editions, together with girls, LGBT individuals, individuals with disabilities, corruption in authorities, and freedom of peaceable meeting. The administration has additionally grossly mischaracterized the human rights data of abusive governments with which it has or is at present searching for pleasant relations.
“The State Division’s new human rights report is in lots of locations an train of whitewashing and deception,” stated Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “Complete classes of abuses have been erased, whereas severe rights violations by allied governments have been papered over.”
The secretary of state is required to ship Congress an annual report on the “human rights circumstances” of nations and territories around the globe. This 12 months’s human rights report might strictly preserve with the minimal statutory necessities however doesn’t acknowledge the truth of widespread human rights violations in opposition to entire teams of individuals in lots of areas.
In consequence, Congress now lacks a broadly trusted, complete software from its personal authorities to appropriately oversee US international coverage and commit assets. Most of the sections and rights abuses that the report omits are extraordinarily essential to understanding the tendencies and developments of human rights globally, Human Rights Watch stated.
On Israel, the State Division disregards the Israeli authorities’ mass compelled displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, their use of hunger as a weapon of battle, and their deliberate deprivation of water, electrical energy, medical assist, and different items mandatory for civilians’ survival, actions that quantity to battle crimes, crimes in opposition to humanity, and acts of genocide. The State Division additionally fails to say huge injury and destruction to Gaza’s important infrastructure and the vast majority of houses, colleges, universities, and hospitals.
The report is dishonest about abuses in some third international locations to which the US is deporting individuals, stating that the US discovered “no credible studies of great human rights abuses” in El Salvador, though they cite “studies” of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and mistreatment by police. The administration has transferred to El Salvador’s prisons, regardless of proof of torture and different abuses.
The State Division glosses over the Hungarian authorities’s escalating efforts to undermine democratic establishments and the rule of legislation, together with extreme curbs on civil society and impartial media, and abuses in opposition to LGBT individuals and migrants. It additionally fails to acknowledge that Russian authorities have broadly used politically motivated imprisonment as a software of their crackdown on dissent, and its prosecutions of people for “extremism” for his or her alleged affiliation with the LGBT motion.
Some sections of the report comprise essential details about rising assaults on human rights worldwide, together with by drawing on reporting by the United Nations, civil society teams, and different human rights consultants. Nonetheless, many Trump administration insurance policies contradict the report’s findings. In a single instance, the State Division notes severe abuses in South Sudan and Rwanda though the Trump administration has deported third-country nationals to South Sudan, and lately agreed to ship 250 individuals to Rwanda.
The report says the human rights conditions in Haiti and Venezuela are considerably worse than the earlier 12 months. In these international locations, in addition to in Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan, quite a few human rights abuses are being credibly reported, together with arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and different ill-treatment, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances, amongst different violations. In different phrases, the Trump administration is conceding these locations are harmful, whereas additionally terminating of momentary protected standing (TPS) for Afghans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Nepalese, and Haitians.
The State Division human rights report has been mandated in a single kind or one other since 1974, beneath the US Overseas Help Act and associated appropriations payments. The preliminary intention was to make sure that the US authorities didn’t assist governments that have interaction in “a constant sample of gross violations of internationally acknowledged human rights.” Beginning in the late 1970s, the State Division started documenting a broader vary of violations —resembling torture, political repression, and restrictions on press freedom —in almost each nation on the planet, besides america.
The annual human rights report has been an important useful resource for US policymakers and legislators, and are routinely used or cited by teachers, lawmakers, and officers assessing asylum claims, each within the US and elsewhere. The nation studies, whereas not all the time complete, have offered very important details about human rights abuses that policymakers might use to evaluate whether or not US help, arms gross sales, or commerce agreements aligned with US values and authorized requirements, together with these set by legal guidelines just like the Overseas Help Act and the Leahy Legal guidelines.
They’ve additionally helped policymakers make choices about whether or not and how one can maintain international governments accountable, together with guiding sanctions choices and supporting at-risk populations.
For a lot of human rights defenders, particularly these in closed societies, public reporting by the US authorities of abuses has lent credibility to their trigger and supplied some safety from their very own repressive governments. In previous years, the report dignified victims and knowledgeable US policymakers but additionally supported diplomatic engagements in international coverage.
The human rights report has been utilized in US asylum courtroom circumstances to indicate that an asylum seeker couldn’t be returned to a rustic the place equally located individuals had been being persecuted. That important useful resource for holding individuals secure is just not solely now not dependable or useful, however in some circumstances might put individuals in danger by denying abuses in locations the place america or different international locations intend to deport asylum seekers and immigrants.
“The State Division’s human rights report has lengthy offered a robust, if too often ignored, foundation for US assist for the worldwide human rights motion,” Yager stated. “The Trump administration has now turned a lot of the report right into a weapon that makes autocrats appear extra palatable and minimizes the human rights abuses taking place in these locations.”
