A draft of the U.S. annual human rights report is significantly shorter than the one prepared by the State Department under the Biden administration last year, according to the Washington Post. The report that has not yet been released by the Trump administration includes Russia, El Salvador and Israel. According to the Post, all references to government abuses of LGBTQ+ rights are removed or softened.
"The documents also are consistent with internal guidance circulated earlier this year by State Department leaders who advised staff to truncate the reports to the minimum required by statutory guidelines and executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, and to remove references to government corruption, gender-based crimes and other abuses the U.S. government historically has documented," the post said in its report.
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U.S. President Donald Trump with Secretary of State Marko Rubio
(Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP)
Regarding Israel, the draft, which was reduced from 100 to 25 pages, was marked “quality check” and was edited in recent days. It is significantly scaled back in its security of corruption and judicial independence compared to the 2023 report that addressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial and the government's efforts to change Israel's judicial system, which was considered a threat to the independence of the courts.
Previous reports also mentioned Israel's surveillance of Palestinians and restrictions on their movement, including Amnesty International's claim of “an experimental facial recognition system to track Palestinians and enforce movement restrictions,” but that is absent from the current draft.
The State Department refused to comment on the drafts leaked to the Washington Post but one senior official who was not named said the 2024 report focuses on core issues and "has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability and is more responsive to the legislative mandate that underpins the report.”
