In this year’s “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” a publication assessing the state of international human rights that’s disseminated by the U.S. Department of State, there was a glaring omission: Any discussion at all of women’s rights.
The report, released this year by the Trump administration, fails to discuss any forms of gendered violence – whereas normally, an entire section is dedicated to the matter. “The introductory documents make no reference to discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity,” Winona Xu of the University of California, Los Angeles wrote in a recent analysis for Harvard University’s Health and Human Rights journal.
The 2023 edition, by contrast, delves into injustices suffered by women in various regions of the world, from Palestine to Afghanistan, as well as problems that plague women the world over, including rape and domestic violence.
Women’s problems weren’t the only ones left out of the latest report, either. The Department of State also failed to examine violations of LGBTQ individuals’ rights, disabled people’s rights and indigenous people’s rights, among other groups. It also glossed over infringements upon fair elections, poor prison conditions, the sexual exploitation of children and more.
The problem is about more than just a lack of acknowledgement, experts like Xu say. The report, published in 1977 following a Congressional mandate, is meant to inform policy decisions and bolster advocacy efforts. Failing to incorporate updates on gendered violence and more is hurting those efforts by “weakening the principle that human rights are universal,” Xu of UCLA said.
“However powerful a state, it cannot rewrite the definition of human rights unilaterally without damaging the legal framework it once espoused,” she continued.
In order to amend the problems created by the shorter report, the U.S. must “reassert the universality and indivisibility of human rights in doctrine and practice,” Xu says, namely by adding back in the sections left off. Considering American officials are the ones responsible for the omissions, however, the matter may not be rectified any time soon.
