Group Accuses State Department Of Dramatically Scaling Back Human Rights Reports To Prioritize Trump Admin's Political Agenda

The State Department released its new, scaled-down version of its annual human rights reports after months of delay, on Tuesday, prompting criticism from some organizations. The shorter version of the reports are the latest signal of the Trump administration's realignment on human rights and U.S. priorities.

The State Department sent its reports to Congress this week, almost a half-year late, and with little recognition that typically comes with the publication.

The reports, which cover 198 countries and territories over the whole of 2024, have seen significant details cut, with many sections removed and country entries often half the length, if not far shorter, compared with previous years, The Washington Post reports.

Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, told NBC News the Trump administration had engaged in highly selective documentation of human rights abuses in certain countries.

"We have criticized past reports when warranted, but have never seen reports quite like this," Klasing said in a statement. "Never before have the reports gone this far in prioritizing an administration's political agenda over a consistent and truthful accounting of human rights violations around the world— softening criticism in some countries while ignoring violations in others."

More specifically, key language in sections on El Salvador, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel— all seen as close partners by the Trump administration— was scaled back or excised. Likewise, scrutiny of significant human rights violations— to include gender-based violence and the persecution of LGBTQI people— has been limited or removed completely in what U.S. officials have said was a bid for "readability" and to ensure the completed reports better complied with statutory guidelines.

Interestingly, Brazil and South Africa, two countries that have found themselves at odds with the Trump administration, faced further scrutiny in the reports. The Brazil section of this year's report says the government, led by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been "disproportionately suppressing the speech of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, as well as journalists and elected politicians, often in secret proceedings that lacked due process guarantees."

In the South Africa section, the report says the country took a "substantially worrying" legislative step toward "land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities in the country," echoing language Trump has used in a campaign to grant refugee status to white South African farmers, The New York Times reports.

Most notably, some of the biggest changes can be seen in the reports for Western Europe, where the Trump administration claimed the human rights situation had gotten worse in 2024. In France, the State Department said, there were "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."

The report for Britain also describes as "two-tier" the country's enforcement of media laws that it said targeted "ordinary Britons"— echoing language from right-wing leaders like Nigel Farage, an ally of Trump, who have called British Prime Minister Keir Starmer "two-tier Keir."

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce defended the administration's version of the report, which U.S. diplomats have compiled for nearly 50 years.

"The Human Rights Report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancy, increases report readability, and is responsive to the legislative mandates that underpin the report, rather than an expansive list of politically biased demands and assertions," Bruce said. "Individual reports are more readable, objective, true to their statutory origins, and more useful than ever before."