For decades, the State Department’s congressionally mandated Human Rights Report has been used as a blueprint of reference for global rights advocacy.
This year’s report was prepared following a major department revamp that included the firing of hundreds of people, many from the agency’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which takes the lead in writing the report.
In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote an opinion piece saying the bureau had become a platform for “left-wing activists”, and vowing that the Trump administration would reorient it to focus on “Western values”.
In Brazil, where the Trump administration has clashed with the government, the State Department found the human rights situation declined, after the 2023 report found no significant changes.
This year’s report took aim at the courts, stating they took action undermining freedom of speech and disproportionately suppressing the speech of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, among others.
Bolsonaro is on trial before the Supreme Court on charges that he conspired with allies to violently overturn his 2022 electoral loss to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Trump has referred to the case as a “witch hunt” and called it grounds for a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods.
In South Africa, whose government the Trump administration has accused of racial discrimination towards Afrikaners, this year’s report said the human rights situation significantly worsened.
It said, “South Africa took a substantially worrying step towards land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities in the country.”
In last year’s report, the State Department found no significant changes in the human rights situation in South Africa.
Trump issued an executive order this year calling for the US to resettle Afrikaners.
He described them as victims of “violence against racially disfavored landowners,” accusations that echoed far-right claims but which have been contested by South Africa’s government.
South Africa dismissed the report’s findings, and said it was flawed, inaccurate and disappointing.
“It is ironic that a report from a nation that has exited the UN Human Rights Council and therefore no longer sees itself accountable in a multilateral peer review system would seek to produce one-sided fact free reports without any due process or engagement,” the government said.
