The 2024 State Department Human Rights Reports transform democrats into despots in a reflection of Trump and MAGA values.
Few things illustrate US President Donald Trump’s radical foreign policy shift as clearly as the 2024 State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
These reports on the state of human rights worldwide were mandated by Congress in 1977 to guide US foreign policy, including on issues such as sanctions. They were based on internationally recognised individual, civil, political and worker rights, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But the Trump administration has upended the practice of the last 48 years in the 2024 reports, which were issued earlier this month. The reports have been radically edited to reflect the interests and values of Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) team.
They have drastically culled what used to be comprehensive and considered assessments, removing whole categories of abuses such as: systemic racial and ethnic discrimination; discrimination against women, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people and indigenous people; restrictions on free and fair elections; government corruption; harassment of human rights organisations; environmental abuse; gender-based violence; restrictions on freedom of assembly and association and the right to a fair trial; inhuman prison conditions; female genital mutilation and others.
In The Atlantic this month, Anne Applebaum wrote that her government sources said State Department human rights experts completed the reports in January, in time for their usual publication in March or April. But then Trump ideologues spent the next six months customising them to the president’s peculiar agenda.
The final reports are drastically abbreviated and include many of Trump’s pet likes and dislikes. Old Western democracies like Germany are castigated for alleged offences such as criminalising Nazi propaganda, while authoritarian states like El Salvador are exonerated. The result turns the world on its head, making El Salvador look more democratic than Germany.
Much the same applies to Africa. The report on South Africa – regarded as one of the continent’s democratic champions – directly reflects Trump’s idiosyncratic problems with the country, especially since his return to the White House in January.
‘The human rights situation in South Africa significantly worsened during the year; with the signing of Expropriation Bill (B23-2020) on December 20, South Africa took a substantially worrying step towards land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities in the country.’
The law allows the state to expropriate land without compensation in some circumstances. It is designed partly to redress the hugely unequal distribution of land, which remains mostly in white hands.
The report said the act followed ‘countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and extreme rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.’
Some of these policies have undoubtedly been clumsy, but the report, like Trump himself, fails to acknowledge that the policies it attacks were designed to redress historical inequalities.
It says Pretoria failed to prosecute and punish officials who committed human rights abuses, ‘including inflammatory racial rhetoric against Afrikaners and other racial minorities, or violence against racial minorities.’
These observations reflect Trump’s unproven claims that white Afrikaners, particularly farmers, are being targeted in a ‘genocide’. That prompted the US to grant white Afrikaner ‘refugees’ asylum in the country. So far, about 100 have been admitted but the number could soon rise to about 30 000 – constituting some 75% of all refugees to the US this year.
The human rights report also blasts ‘anti-Zionist and related antisemitic rhetoric at high levels of government’ and says ‘Government officials openly supported pro-Hamas positions.’
It is particularly instructive to compare the 2023 and 2024 reports on Equatorial Guinea, because the country is among the worst abusers of human rights in Africa.
For starters, the 2024 report is around 2 100 words, compared to the over 7 700 words in 2023. Whole sections have been stripped, including on restrictions: on free and fair elections and the independence of the judiciary; government corruption; extensive gender-based violence, and violence or threats targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex persons.
On the last point for instance, the 2023 report said ‘Police raped and sexually abused transgender women and girls in detention facilities, as well as lesbian or queer-presenting youth to “prove” the youth were women.’ On this, the 2024 report is silent.
The most disturbing aspect of these reports though, is that the omissions together amount to a de facto repudiation of democracy.
It can be argued that what counts is actions rather than words, and therefore what the Trump administration does, rather than what the State Department reports say, is important.
But these reports have a longer reach than the US government. As Applebaum observes, because they were perceived as relatively impartial, benchmarked on global standards and compiled by professionals working on the ground, ‘they became a gold standard, widely used by people around the world, cited in court cases and political campaigns.’
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Now, they are just another expression of Trumpian ideology. Applebaum points out that the 2024 reports are self-serving. Where the 2023 edition criticised harsh and even lethal conditions in El Salvador’s prisons, the 2024 report finds ‘no credible reports of significant human rights abuses.’
That is because the Trump administration is deporting unwanted people to El Salvador, she says. Likewise, Germany is criticised for ‘restrictions on freedom of expression’ because Berlin obliges US and other internet companies to take down hate speech – to the annoyance of Trump’s big tech supporters.
Applebaum suggests that the Trump administration is using the reports to justify not only US foreign policy but also its domestic policies. For example, the reports downplay the manipulation of elections, harassment of civil society activists and discrimination against women or sexual minorities.
From Africa’s perspective though, the biggest loss is that victims of human rights abuses will no longer be able to cite the reports as authority in disputes with their own repressive governments. The report has cheapened the currency of human rights across the continent and the globe.
Peter Fabricius, Consultant, ISS Pretoria