Spring 2025 will mark the 48th release of the U.S. Department of State’s annual congressionally mandated Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, commonly referred to as the Human Rights Reports (HRRs). It is widely anticipated that the topics covered in this year’s nearly 200 country reports will be pared down to the minimum required by law—in accordance with guidance from the Trump administration. Department of State employees have reportedly been instructed to streamline the reports, removing sections addressing arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, extensive gender-based violence, involuntary medical or psychological practices, restrictions on internet freedom, and violence or discrimination against LGBTQ people or people with disabilities. The Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which produces the reports, has dismissed 60 contractors, impacting the bureau’s bandwidth to dig deeply into human rights issues.
The HRRs have changed and expanded over the years, reflecting changes in human rights trends over time. Reports have also changed across administrations—as administrations emphasize or de-emphasize priorities—but the reports exist due to demand from Congress on both sides of the aisle, and overall support for the HRRs has remained largely bipartisan. The persistence of the reports for almost half a century demonstrates a recognition of the enduring value of human rights to U.S. interests.
Policymakers, activists, and citizens who utilize these reports as an important tool for upholding human rights across the globe are looking to the release of these reports to better understand U.S. positions on human rights issues.
Q1: What are the HRRs?
A1: Since Congress first mandated the HRRs in 1977, they have demonstrated that the United States’ enduring commitment to protect human rights is a core component of U.S. foreign policy. According to the Department of State’s website for the reports since 2019, “the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, also known as the HRRs, cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements.”
Today, the Department of State submits reports on all countries receiving U.S. assistance and all United Nations member states—totaling 194 in 2023. The first reports, released in 1978, only covered the 105 countries that received aid from the United States in 1977. By the end of the Cold War in 1991, the reports included 170 countries.
The reports cover individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as well as instances of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and other related abuses, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, association, religion, or belief. They do not rank or compare countries’ human rights practices but seek to provide data on the state of human rights in each country examined.
The United States compiles the reports from a wide variety of sources, including foreign governments, victims and survivors of alleged human rights abuses, academic studies, as well as reports from media, international organizations, and nongovernment organizations. They are composed and approved by U.S. diplomats and public servants.
Successive secretaries of state have commented on the importance of the reports in upholding U.S. values and promoting U.S. leadership in human rights and democracy. In the preface of the 2023 HRRs, former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken wrote, “We submit these country reports in service to our common humanity.” And for the 2017 HRRs, former Secretary of State John Sullivan remarked, “We seek to lead other nations by example in promoting just and effective governance based on the rule of law and respect for human rights.”
Since 2009, the reports have consistently included seven main sections: Respect for the Integrity of the Person; Respect for Civil Liberties; Freedom to Participate in the Political Process; Corruption in Government; Governmental Posture Towards International and Nongovernmental Monitoring and Investigation of Alleged Abuses of Human Rights; Discrimination and Societal Abuses; and Worker Rights.
The 2023 reports highlighted key human rights abuses from the previous year, including civilian harm in the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Sudan, violence in the conflict in Israel and Gaza, and repression of human rights by the regime in Iran, among many others. The reports do not list every human rights abuse or violation throughout the year, nor do they reach legal conclusions. Rather, they serve as a credible, vetted report on the human rights conditions in every corner of the globe.
Q2: Why were the reports created?
A2: After the 87th U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act (FA) of 1961 under President Kennedy, Congress needed a new resource on the global state of human rights to determine which countries should be eligible to receive U.S. foreign aid. In 1977, Congress legally required the U.S. government to issue these reports annually by amending section 116 of the FA in 1977. This provision required the secretary of state to provide a yearly report on the “status of internationally recognized human rights in countries that receive assistance” to the speaker of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, now known as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1979, Congress added a requirement for the United States to issue annual reports on all UN member states. This legislation, partnered with the Trade Act of 1974, which required country reports to be submitted to Congress on the status of worker rights, the legal mandate for the HRRs.
By the end of 1977, under President Jimmy Carter, Congress mandated the formation of the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs in the Department of State, later to become the Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor or DRL. It was staffed by foreign service officers with regional and thematic expertise. One of the main responsibilities of this new bureau and its country-based staff was the management of the modern-day country reports on human rights.
The United States was a vanguard for human rights reporting. The reports were among the first of their kind, paving the way for additional human rights documentation by the UN and internationally recognized human rights organizations. The first “Universal Periodic Review,” a UN-led process in which each UN member state undergoes a review of its human rights records every four and a half years, did not occur until 2008. The first Human Rights Watch Global Report was published in 1989. The HRRs were preceded only by Amnesty International’s yearly reports beginning in 1962, which did not cover specific countries until 1971.
Q3: How are the HRRs used?
A3: Since their creation, the HRRs have been used worldwide as a record of the current state of international human rights as well as a vital resource for the people working to uphold and defend human rights globally. Governments use the reports to take account of what work still needs to be done and support the creation of strategies used to protect human rights. For instance, upon the release of the 2007 HRRs, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted that progress on human rights is often not smooth. Yet the HRRs could be a useful tool for countries to help overcome barriers standing in the way of justice. She noted, “This document is collected and written with the optimism that no corner of the earth is permanently condemned to tyranny.”
The reports provide journalists, advocacy groups, businesses, and researchers with factual, objective information on human rights violations that can be used to help understand factors affecting investment in a country or advocate for the protection of individuals on a wider scale. For years, the online version of the reports has generated the largest number of views on the Department of State’s website. Although administrations have added or deleted sections of the reports, U.S. embassies across the world employ a rigorous monitoring and tracking process, ensuring that the information in the reports remains factual, objective, and useful.
The HRRs were initially conceptualized as part of a foreign policy approach that would sanction states that were not living up to human rights commitments. Foreign assistance to countries engaged “in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” is prohibited under Section 116 (a) of the FA. In practice, given the availability and usage of congressional waivers, the reports have never been the sole basis for sanctions but have instead been one consideration amongst many in determinations to cut off foreign assistance or take other diplomatic actions.
Yet even considering their limited impact in determining U.S. sanctions, the reports are widely valued by a wide range of stakeholders both internationally and domestically. The HRRs are regularly used in diplomatic engagement and foreign assistance decisionmaking, as well as by domestic constituencies aiming to influence that decisionmaking, either to increase support for those working for human rights or to withhold support for governments that are not protecting those rights. Many in Congress view the reports as the most authoritative source on the state of human rights and often cite the reports in public statements. Additionally, the reports are regularly used as a wedge, pointing out the human rights failings of geostrategic competitors in contrast to the United States and its allies. This was particularly prominent during the Cold War.
Domestically, HRRs are often utilized by advocates aiming to influence human rights–related designations such as sanctions or refugee and immigration rights. The designation or continuation of Temporary Protected Status, a temporary right to reside in the United States based on the Department of Homeland Security’s determination that “due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely,” is one such area. While campaigning for an extension of such a determination for Afghanistan in 2023, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, an advocacy group, utilized in-depth analysis from the HRRs on “state-directed discrimination and repression by the Taliban authorities against vulnerable groups.” These reports are also used to question such decisionmaking, with Human Rights First directly quoting the HRRs in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti following the Trump administration’s decision to end asylum seekers’ access to the ports of entry most utilized by migrants from those four countries.
The HRRs also matter to the countries they examine. To avoid unfavorable analysis in the HRRs, foreign governments often enlist lobbyists to influence the Department of State’s conclusions from year to year. An analysis from 1976–2012 underscores this approach. Simply put, foreign governments would not dedicate resources to influence the HRRs if they did not care about what they said.
The U.S. country reports have served as a key data point for the Political Terror Scale (PTS), which is a yearly measure of state-inflicted terror that was created as a way to observe whether U.S. foreign aid was being provided to countries violating international human rights. In addition to the HRRs, PTS compiles its data index from two additional sources: Amnesty International’s yearly country reports and the Human Rights Watch’s World Reports. One element that distinguishes the U.S. reports from others is that U.S. diplomats have greater access to state sources compared with reports created by nongovernmental organizations.
Q4: How have U.S. administrations changed the reports?
A4: Since their first iteration in 1978, the HRRs have frequently expanded and changed to reflect the United States’ evolving understanding of human rights trends over time, with sections being added, deleted, and renamed.
During the Reagan administration, for example, the reports expanded significantly to include two new sections: “Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion, Language, or Social Status” in 1986 and “Worker Rights” in 1988. The Department of State has continued to include content on both topics, in some form, up to 2023. The Obama administration expanded the 2009 reports to make a subsection under “Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government” into its own section entitled “Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government.”
Over time, the reports have included more information on the status of women, maternal and infant mortality rates, and reproductive rights. Reproductive health received growing mention in the early 2000s, and in 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave the topic its own formal heading. HRRs during the rest of the Obama administration addressed maternal mortality and access to contraception and family planning services. The first Trump administration removed “reproductive rights” as a heading, and reproductive health in each country was reported on solely in terms of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization. The Biden administration reinstated the heading, which reappeared in the 2020 and subsequent reports. This back and forth is a key reflection of changing political priorities around reproductive health across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
Changing geopolitics are also reflected throughout the reports, with country names being added or changed to reflect the formation of new countries, treaties, and international agreements. The first reports cover “Upper Volta,” which would become Burkina Faso, and “Israel,” which became “Israel and the Occupied territories” in the 1980 reports, and “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza” in 2017.
Debates over whether to include economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) have been evident in the reports over time. The first reports under the Carter administration included descriptions of countries’ respect for ESCR in a section entitled “Government Policies Relating to the Fulfillment of Such Needs as Food, Shelter, Health Care, and Education.” This section was deleted in 1981 under the Reagan administration, demonstrating the United States’ view that civil and political rights should be prioritized over economic, social, and cultural ones. Since the Carter reports, mention of ESCR in the HRRs has generally been limited, and the reports tend to focus on civil and political rights such as freedom of speech and the right to participate in the political process.
Ultimately, the release of the 2024 reports will provide an invaluable window into both what the human rights situation looks like in countries across the globe as well as into the human rights priorities of the second Trump administration. Topics that are de-emphasized or removed are unlikely to be substantial points of interest, while those that are included may still prove valuable points of advocacy and diplomatic pressure for those looking to ensure human rights are a significant consideration in the U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking process.
Anne Frederick is a program manager with the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Lily Kennedy is an intern with the Humanitarian Agenda and Human Rights Initiative at CSIS. Andrew Friedman is a senior fellow in the Human Rights Initiative at CSIS. Michelle Struck is director of the Humanitarian Agenda and the Human Rights Initiative at CSIS.
