📉 Human Rights Redefined by Trump Administration: What It Means for the World

Key abuses, like LGBTQ+ discrimination and political repression, risk being overlooked.

Apr 19, 2025

😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾

The U.S. government makes reports about how countries treat their people. 📝 These reports help protect people from being treated badly. 🛡️ Now, the government is changing these reports to leave out important information, like when countries put people in terrible jails 🏚️, when leaders steal money 💰, or when some people are treated badly because of who they are. 😔 This means many people around the world might not get the help they need. 🌍 People who care about fairness are working together to make sure everyone's rights are still protected. 🤝

🗝️ Takeaways

📝 The State Department is removing several key categories from its human rights reports, including prison conditions, corruption, political repression, and LGBTQ+ discrimination
🌍 This shift signals to authoritarian regimes that these types of abuses are no longer U.S. priorities
🛂 Border communities and migrants will be particularly affected by the removal of reporting on forced repatriation and asylum-seeker treatment
🔄 These international policy changes mirror domestic policy shifts targeting marginalized communities
✊ Grassroots documentation and community-based human rights monitoring are becoming more crucial as official channels retreat
🤝 Building international solidarity networks across movements is essential to resist this narrowing definition of human rights

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The Shrinking Definition of Human Rights: How the State Department's New Approach Affects Us All

Aquí estamos y no nos vamos. Here we are, and we're not leaving. This refrain echoes through the borderlands of Southern Arizona, through centuries of resistance against colonization, and through the continuing struggle for human rights that defines our communities.

But while we remain steadfast, the definition of "human rights" itself is shrinking before our eyes.

A Disturbing Shift in U.S. Human Rights Policy

The U.S. State Department, now under Secretary Marco Rubio and the second Trump administration, has begun implementing a dramatic shift in how it defines and reports on human rights around the world.1

The annual human rights reports, which have for decades served as a comprehensive documentation of abuses worldwide, are being systematically gutted of crucial categories of human rights violations.

These changes aren't subtle tweaks or refinements—they represent a fundamental reconceptualization of what constitutes a human rights abuse worthy of U.S. attention and documentation.

What's Being Erased?

Internal documents from the State Department reveal a troubling pattern of exclusion. Officials have been instructed to "streamline" the reports, focusing only on what is legally mandated, effectively reducing human rights monitoring to the bare minimum required by law.

What's being removed from these reports? A lot:

Documentation of inadequate prison conditions
Governmental corruption
Restrictions on political engagement, including limits on freedom of movement, peaceful assembly, and fair elections
Detention of political prisoners without due process
Forced repatriation of refugees or asylum-seekers to dangerous countries
Harassment of human rights organizations

Perhaps most alarmingly, references to violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals are being eliminated, along with documentation of gender-based violence, privacy violations, and restrictions on internet freedom.

Qué conveniente, no? How convenient that the categories being erased align so neatly with the very abuses that the current administration has been criticized for enabling or encouraging.

The View from the Borderlands

For those of us living in the borderlands, this shift isn't an abstract policy change—it's a dangerous signal that certain human rights abuses no longer matter to the U.S. government.

When the State Department removes documentation of forced repatriation of refugees or asylum-seekers, it's a direct message to our communities that the suffering of migrants—many of them Indigenous peoples from throughout the Americas—is no longer worthy of attention. This comes at a time when border communities are already experiencing intensified militarization and surveillance.

When documentation of governmental corruption is removed, it affects Indigenous communities throughout the Americas who face resource extraction on their lands facilitated by corrupt officials. The erasure of this corruption from human rights reports means one less tool to hold these officials accountable.

When harassment of human rights organizations is no longer documented, it puts at risk the very people and groups working to protect vulnerable communities along the border and beyond.

A Retreat from Global Human Rights Leadership

This retreat from comprehensive human rights reporting represents a significant departure from decades of U.S. advocacy. By prioritizing a legally minimalist definition of human rights, the State Department is abandoning its role as a global watchdog for human rights in many crucial areas.

Paul O'Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, stated it plainly: "This is a clear indication that the United States will no longer exert pressure on other nations to uphold the rights that ensure civic and political freedoms — the right to speak, express oneself, assemble, protest, and organize."2

Christopher Le Mon, former deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, warned: "The harm to that credibility will be substantial if the Trump administration's edits are perceived as narrowing the definition of human rights or favoring certain groups."

Selective Reporting and Its Consequences

While some categories—war crimes, genocide, antisemitism, labor rights, and child marriage—remain mandated by law and will still be reported, the selective approach sends a dangerous message to authoritarian regimes worldwide.

Piensa en esto: Think about this. If you're a government engaged in political repression, wouldn't you feel emboldened when the world's most powerful nation suddenly stops documenting your abuses in these areas? The silence becomes permission.

The narrowing of human rights reporting creates a hierarchy of suffering, where some forms of oppression are deemed worthy of attention while others are erased from the official record.

This hierarchy has always existed, but now it's being codified in policy.

The False Narrative of "Streamlining"

The administration's framing of these changes as "streamlining" is a political sleight of hand. This isn't about efficiency—it's about ideology. It's about redefining human rights in a way that aligns with a particular political vision, one that prioritizes certain rights and certain people over others.

For Indigenous communities who have experienced centuries of having their rights redefined and narrowed by colonial powers, this pattern is all too familiar. The redefinition of human rights to exclude certain categories of abuse is just another chapter in the long history of selective application of rights and protections.

The Connection to Domestic Policy

These international human rights reporting changes don't exist in isolation—they mirror domestic policy shifts that have targeted marginalized communities.

The removal of LGBTQ+ rights documentation internationally comes alongside renewed attacks on LGBTQ+ protections domestically.
The erasure of documentation on restrictions to political engagement abroad coincides with new voting restrictions at home.

For those of us who have always lived at the intersections of multiple oppressions, these parallel developments are not coincidental—they're coordinated. They represent a comprehensive approach to reshaping whose rights matter and whose don't, both at home and abroad.

The Impact on Global Advocacy

Beyond the immediate policy implications, these changes threaten to undermine decades of progress in expanding the definition of human rights to include the full range of threats to human dignity.

Human rights advocates have long fought to ensure that rights aren't limited to simply not being killed by your government—that they include the right to participate in society, to be free from discrimination, to have agency over your own body, to seek asylum from danger, and to have your cultural rights respected.

The State Department's new approach threatens to turn back the clock on this progress, returning to a more limited conception of rights that fails to capture the full scope of human experience and suffering.

Where Do We Go From Here?

What are we to do in the face of this retreat from comprehensive human rights advocacy? How do we continue the fight for a more just world when the tools for accountability are being dismantled?

First, we must recognize that our communities have never relied solely on government recognition for their survival or their resistance. Long before there was a State Department human rights report, Indigenous communities were fighting for their rights and documenting abuses against them.

Second, we must build and strengthen alternative documentation mechanisms. Independent human rights organizations, community-based monitoring networks, and international solidarity movements become even more crucial when official channels abandon their responsibility.

Third, we must connect these international policy shifts to local struggles. When we organize against border militarization, protest extractive industries on Indigenous lands, and defend the rights of migrants, we are engaging in human rights work that transcends the narrowing definitions being imposed from above.

A Note of Hope

Despite these concerning developments, I find hope in the resilience of our communities and the power of collective resistance.

Nunca hemos dependido de su reconocimiento para existir. We have never depended on their recognition to exist. Narrowing official human rights definitions doesn't change who we are or what we know to be true. It doesn't erase our experiences or our determination to fight for justice.

Throughout history, the most significant human rights advances have come not from government initiatives but from grassroots movements demanding recognition and respect.

From the civil rights movement to Indigenous land defense, from women's suffrage to LGBTQ+ liberation, progress has always been driven from below.

This moment calls for renewed solidarity across movements and borders. It calls for creative resistance and unwavering commitment to the full spectrum of human rights for all people.

How to Get Involved

Here are some ways you can join this fight:

Support local human rights documentation efforts. Many community organizations are doing the crucial work of monitoring and documenting abuses that may no longer be captured in official reports.
Amplify marginalized voices. Use whatever platform you have to ensure that human rights abuses don't go unnoticed, even when they're no longer included in State Department reports.
Engage with your representatives. Let them know that you value comprehensive human rights reporting and expect the U.S. to maintain its leadership role in this area.
Build international solidarity networks. Connect with human rights defenders across borders to share information and strategies for resistance.
Support Three Sonorans in our work documenting and reporting on human rights issues affecting borderland communities. Your contributions help us continue providing critical information and analysis that mainstream sources often overlook.

La lucha continúa, y juntos, venceremos. The struggle continues, and together, we will overcome.

What do you think about these changes to human rights reporting? How might they affect communities in your area? Leave your comments below.