Trump administration moves focus of key human rights report away from persecuted identity groups

The State Department’s human rights report will move away from noting persecution of marginalized groups, including women and ethnic and racial minorities.

The State Department’s next human rights report will move away from calling out the persecution of marginalized groups such as women, ethnic and racial minorities, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community and instead focus on the “natural rights” of the individual, a senior State Department official said Thursday.

“We believe that every individual has these rights, no matter their group identity,” the senior State Department official said in a briefing to reporters.

The official spoke on behalf of the State Department on the condition of anonymity. “It’s not because of their group identity, it’s because they have had a right taken away from them, whether it’s freedom of speech, freedom religion, you name the right, we are here to protect them and to hold governments accountable.”

New guidance was sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates abroad Thursday, mandating U.S. diplomats also note other infringements on human rights in foreign countries, according to a second senior State Department official.

Those violations include the chemical or surgical mutilation of children in operations that attempt to modify their sex, the enforcement of DEI policies like affirmative action, the facilitation of mass or illegal migration across a country’s territory into other countries, state subsidization of abortions; attempts to coerce individuals into engaging in euthanasia and medical abuses including forced testing, forced organ harvesting and eugenic gene-editing practices on human embryos.