Yesterday the State Department announced a change in focus for future Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The Daily Signal and the Washington Post report on new instructions and guidelines provided to U.S. embassies and consulates as they begin to prepare reports for their nations. As reported by The Daily Signal, the following will now be treated as human rights violations by foreign countries:
Sex-change procedures for minors, such as hormone replacement regimens or irreversible transgender surgeries.
Government funded abortions or abortifacient drugs, as well as the total estimated number of annual abortions.
Arrests, administrative penalties, and “official investigations or warnings” for speech or “hate speech.”
The enforcement of policies like affirmative action or diversity, equity, and inclusion that “provide preferential treatment” to workers on the basis of race, sex, or caste.
The facilitation of mass or illegal migration across a country’s territory into other countries.
Attempts to coerce individuals into engaging in euthanasia.
Violations of religious freedom, including antisemitic violence and harassment.
Medical abuses, including forced testing, forced organ harvesting, and eugenic gene-editing practices on human embryos.
According to the Washington Post:
In unveiling the dramatic shift, Trump administration officials offered an unapologetically U.S.-centric and religiously tinged view of human rights. “The United States remains committed to the Declaration of Independence’s recognition that all men are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights,” said a senior State Department official also involved with briefing the news media. The aim is to focus on rights “given to us by God, our creator, not by governments.”
