In response to the news reports that the U.S. State Department has issued new guidelines for the annual U.S. human rights reports to focus on so-called “natural rights,” Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy, said:
“Decades ago, Congress mandated the State Department to release annual reports on human rights — based on universal human rights standards — to provide it with information that would help inform which laws to pass, which programs to fund, and to perform oversight to ensure the U.S. didn’t contribute to or fund human rights abuses abroad.
“As we saw with the release of these reports earlier this year, the Trump Administration has already downplayed or ignored certain human rights abuses. This new guidance reportedly doubles down on this selective documentation of human rights and is a blatant attempt to institutionalize a philosophy that only recognizes some rights for some people, depending on who you are or where you live. This shift away from universal human rights towards elusive and undefined “natural rights” in future State Department reports will cause real harm to women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups around the world who are facing human rights violations.”
“This latest guidance is chilling. It sends the message that the U.S. no longer believes in the foundational element of the human rights system it helped build with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)– that “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family”, as promulgated in the preamble of the UDHR, are indeed universal. This declaration adopted after the atrocities of the Second World War was the first time countries agreed on the freedoms and rights that must be guaranteed universal protection for all people; they have since been codified in binding treaties the U.S. has ratified.
“With this latest guidance, the U.S. seems to be adopting a philosophy of rights that allows it to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing certain human rights violations will be left to fend for themselves.
“Failing to adequately report on human rights violations further damages the credibility of the U.S. on human rights issues, and it leaves Congress and the public with unreliable information that could have catastrophic impacts on people’s lives. Congress must use its full oversight authority to ensure that future reports are grounded in facts, not ideology, and rooted in long established, universally recognized standards.”
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