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The administration of President Donald Trump reduces criticism of certain foreign governments on their human rights files, including their treatment of LGBTQ +people, in a transition from the traditional promotion of American rights, The Washington Post reported.
The newspaper examined projects to postpone reports on Salvador, Israel and Russia in preparation for the annual report of the State Department on human rights practices in the countries of the world.
Nowsweek contacted the State Department to comment on Wednesday evening.
Why it matters
The reports disclosed for the three countries underline how the Trump administration rethinks the American role in the world advocacy of human rights.
The apparent change in human rights reflects a desection scheme for international conventions and occurs while the administration has already moved to abandon long -standing positions and standards in fields such as trade, environment and relations with allies.
Diplomats in American embassies around the world have written the annual rights report for almost 50 years. Their results are considered to be the most in -depth and extensive of their species.
Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
What to know
THE Job declared that the documents he examined comply with the internal guidelines disseminated this year by the heads of the State Department who advised the personnel to shorten the minimum reports required by statutory guidelines and decrees and to remove references to government corruption, sexist crimes and other abuses than the American government has historically documented.
“The 2024 human rights report has been restructured in a manner that removes layoffs, increases the readability of the report and is more sensitive to the legislative mandate underlying the report,” said the newspaper cited a senior official of the State Department.
According to the Job, The reports he examined are much shorter than those prepared last year by the administration of former president Joe Biden. They have reduced all the references to LGBTQ + people or to crimes against them, and the descriptions of the abuses of the government that remain have been softened.
El Salvador’s project said that he had “no credible report on significant human rights violations” in 2024. The previous report for El Salvador, documenting 2023, identified “important human rights issues” – including killings sanctioned by the government, torture and “severe and severe prison conditions.”.
“A comparison of the documents covering El Salvador shows that the Trump administration minimized the history of penitentiary violence in the country, stressing that there has been a global reduction while declaring that alleged deaths were under examination of the government,” reported the newspaper.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, a close ally of Trump, proposed to house people from other countries expelled by the United States in a mega-prison built to hold gang members.
“The examination of corruption and judicial independence is also considerably reduced in the report for Israel,” said the newspaper, adding that the Israel project is 25 pages against more than 100 pages last year.
The Israel’s project makes no mention of corruption or threats to the independence of its judiciary. The 2023 report compiled by the Biden Administration deals with the corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the efforts of judicial redesign, which, according to criticism, threaten the independence of the judiciary.
Previous reports also mentioned the Israeli surveillance of the Palestinians and the restrictions of their movement, but the question is not addressed in the project, the project Job said.
Keifer Buckingham, who worked on LGBTQ + problems in the State Department until January, told the Job The fact of not including any mention in the revised relationships of violence or violence based on the sexes against LGBTQ + people was a “flagrant omission” in the case of Russia, where his supreme court had prohibited LGBTQ + organizations and labeled them “extremists”, with raids and arrests last year.
What people say
Buckingham, also Director General of the Council for World Equality, said: “The secretary (of the state Marco) Rubio said on several occasions that his State Department had not abandoned human rights, but he is clear by this and in other actions that this administration cares about human rights of certain people … in some countries, when that suits them.”
The senior State Department official quoted by the newspaper said: “The human rights report focuses on basic issues.”
What happens next
It is not clear if the reports finally sent to the congress and submitted to the public will reflect the projects. Those of El Salvador and Russia are marked “finalized”, while the Israel project is marked “quality control”, the Job reported.
