Recently, the United States Department of State made significant adjustments to the guidelines for the annual “Human Rights Report.” The new guidelines now include foreign governments’ implementation of so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies, equal rights actions, state subsidies for abortion, child gender transition surgeries, and promotion of large-scale illegal border crossings as human rights violations. This adjustment reflects a new direction in the foreign policy of the Trump administration’s “America First” initiative.
According to a report from Reuters on Friday, high-ranking officials at the U.S. Department of State revealed that the new directive requires U.S. embassies abroad to document situations where foreign governments arrest or investigate individuals for their speech, state subsidies for abortion or abortion drugs, estimated total number of abortions each year, and the implementation of DEI policies providing preferential treatment to employees based on race, gender, or ethnicity.
U.S. officials also defined “child gender transition surgeries” as actions involving chemical or surgical harm to “change their gender” and view the facilitation of large-scale illegal immigration “crossing a country’s territory into another country” as a human rights violation.
State Department Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott stated, “In recent years, a new destructive ideology has provided a safe haven for human rights abuses. The Trump administration will not allow those engaged in such human rights abuses, including harming children, enacting laws restricting freedom of speech, and practicing racial discrimination in employment, to go unpunished.”
Pigott further pointed out that the new guidelines aim to “change the behavior of governments” and reassert that the United States upholds the unalienable rights recognized in the Declaration of Independence, rights that “are endowed by our Creator, not by the government.”
For years, the annual “Human Rights Report” compiled by the State Department, authorized by Congress, has been considered the most comprehensive official reference document on global human rights conditions and a long-standing blueprint for promoting democratic values in the United States. Following these guideline adjustments, the focus of the “Human Rights Report” will shift towards the “destructive new ideologies” identified by the Trump administration as constituting human rights violations.
The latest report released in August already reflects this shift: criticism of certain U.S. allies has noticeably decreased, while criticism of countries such as Brazil and South Africa has intensified.
The report specifically points out that some European countries’ practices of criminalizing hate speech online have led to erosion of freedom of speech, with human rights conditions deteriorating in countries like the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Additionally, this report has significantly reduced content related to government corruption, persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals, compared to previous versions.
It is expected that the new adjusted guidelines will involve multiple European countries. Trump administration officials have publicly criticized authorities in Romania, Germany, France, among others, for suppressing right-wing leaders, censoring criticism of illegal immigration, and view some European countries’ implementation of the so-called “Internet Security Law” as a threat to freedom of speech.
The Trump administration emphasizes that these guideline adjustments aim to no longer provide ideological shelter for human rights violations and ensure that traditional human rights standards are not distorted.
State Department officials state that the United States will continue to record violations of life and freedom of speech worldwide in the annual “Human Rights Report” to uphold unalienable rights based on those endowed by the Creator.
The new guidelines have been distributed to all U.S. embassies and consulates participating in the report compilation and will officially take effect in the next annual report.