By Jessica Stern and Desiree Cormier Smith

The State Department is expected to release its annual Human Rights Reports (HRRs) sometime this fall. For nearly 50 years, the HRRs have been an authoritative source on human rights conditions around the world. But last year, the Trump administration erased entire categories of abuse. Reporting since last fall indicates this year’s reports will go even further and that governments aligned with the Trump administration will see limited criticism.

The Alliance’s co-founders and co-presidents Jessica Stern and Desiree Cormier Smith helped research, edit, and oversee these reports during their tenures in the State Department. They explain how the HRRs have traditionally functioned, what the Trump administration has changed about the reports, and what it means for U.S. foreign policy and global human rights.

What has been the historical mandate of the reports and how have they functioned?

Stern: For nearly 50 years, the HRRs have been an authoritative source of data, providing a country-by-country accounting of human rights conditions. Congress first mandated these reports in 1977, and ever since they have shown that the United States considers human rights an important facet of its foreign policy. The reports have traditionally covered a wide range of individual, civil, political, and workers’ rights, as well as torture, arbitrary detention, and freedom of expression, association, religion, or belief.

Courts, asylum officers, immigration judges, journalists, scholars, and human rights defenders around the world have relied on the reports because they largely held steady across Democratic and Republican administrations. While they’ve never been perfect, the reports’ credibility rested on their appearance of political neutrality and their grounding in universally recognized human rights. Career diplomats and U.S. public servants draft the reports based on a wide variety of sources, including media and NGO reports and accounts from victims and survivors of human rights abuses.

What did the Trump administration change about the HRRs last year and what do we expect to see this year?

Cormier Smith: Last year’s reports changed everything. The State Department erased entire categories of abuse, including the ones on racial and ethnic discrimination and violence, Indigenous peoples, women and girls, LGBTQI+ people, and child protection. The Israel, West Bank, and Gaza report was cut by more than 90 percent.

The reports also weren’t released on schedule, landing on a Friday afternoon in August, while Congress was out of session, months after these reports have historically come out. This was just a test run for what we expect to see this year.

Reporting since last November indicates the State Department has instructed every embassy to start treating things like diversity, equity, and inclusion policies; care for transgender children; restrictions on hate speech; and government support for abortion as human rights violations.

The State Department even prohibited the inclusion of data from NGOs whose views deviate from the administration’s executive orders and policies, depriving the reports of credible information from some of the world’s leading human rights organizations.

For decades, this report measured whether governments tortured, jailed, or killed people for who they are or what they believe. Now it's being retooled to measure whether governments enforce policies that happen to be unpopular with this administration.

The same reporting says the report will elevate "natural rights" like free speech — specifically to target European allies over hate-speech laws and digital regulation. The State Department has already sanctioned European officials and civil society leaders over what it calls censorship, months before the report itself was even finalized. So the pattern is: Britain, France, and Germany can expect pages on "restrictions on expression." Governments that jail journalists, criminalize dissent outright, oppress racialized groups, or violently suppress protest — but happen to be friendly to this administration — can expect a lighter touch.

What are the implications for U.S. foreign policy and human rights around the world?

Stern: Authoritarian governments have said for decades that human rights are a Western cudgel, applied selectively to serve political interests. A politicized report proves their point for them. It hands other countries a talking point they don't even have to write themselves. And it leaves genuine human rights defenders — the people risking their lives in real time — with one less credible government willing to stand with them, at the exact moment authoritarianism is on the rise globally. That is the cost.

Cormier Smith: The modern international human rights system was built after the horrific destruction of the Holocaust and World War Two to try and prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. That system, albeit imperfect, rests on a simple premise: rights are universal, they don't bend depending on who holds power, and every government, including our own, can be measured against the same standard. This report was one concrete way the United States tried to back that premise with action, regardless of who was in the Oval Office.