The US reverses its human rights stance: Criticism of Brazil, praise for El Salvador

The human rights situation “has deteriorated” in Brazil, but in El Salvador “there is no credible information” that abuses are occurring. In Israel and the occupied territories, the only war crimes are committed by Hamas. This is the worldview, and the global respect for rights, held by the U.S. State Department under the Donald Trump administration, reflected in its annual report on rights and freedoms in different countries and released Tuesday.

The 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices is very different from last year’s document, issued under the Democratic administration of Joe Biden. The publication of the new text had been delayed for months, apparently to align it with the Republican administration’s perceptions: until now, the usual presentation took place in April or May. Compared to previous editions, sections on respect for gay rights and analyses of gender-based violence have disappeared; instead, sections on “Life” and “Security of Personhood” have been included.

For years, the report has served as a source and argument for human rights defenders in their mobilization campaigns. The U.S. Congress also refers to it in its decisions, such as approving arms sales, among other things. But Trump had already signaled that changes were coming. On his trip to Saudi Arabia in the spring, the Republican lashed out at “Western interventionism” and assured that the United States would no longer be “giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs.”

In the new report, nations with which Trump’s Washington maintains good relations generally receive positive marks. Those that, for whatever reason, have irritated the U.S. president receive harsher rebukes than in previous years. Venezuela — whose President Nicolás Maduro the State Department accuses of links to drug trafficking — is one of the worst-ranked nations in the report: its human rights situation “deteriorated significantly” while there have been “credible reports” of disappearances, torture, arbitrary detentions, transnational repression, and many other abuses, according to the document.

The section on Israel is much shorter than in the 2023 version. There is no reference to the thousands of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, which the Hamas-run Ministry of Health estimates at over 61,000. There is also no mention of the desperate humanitarian situation or Israel’s restrictions on food supplies. The section on war crimes and genocide concludes with two lines: “Terrorist organizations Hamas and Hizballah continue to engage in the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict.”

Another government that is a close ally of the Trump administration, that of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, has seen its ratings greatly improved, and the report’s dedicated space has been significantly reduced: comments take up 75% less than in previous editions. Mentions of the country’s prison conditions, which Amnesty International had described as “inhumane,” and allegations of arbitrary arrests have disappeared.

According to the report, in the Central American nation: “There were no significant changes in the human rights situation in El Salvador during the year. Reports of gang violence remained at a historic low under the state of exception as mass arrests suppressed gang activity. There were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses. The government took credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses.”

Brazil, on the other hand, whose relationship with Washington has plummeted and on which the Trump administration has imposed new tariffs due to the house arrest of former president Jair Bolsonaro — a former international ally of Trump — is vilified in the report. The State Department, which previously criticized the president’s arrest as a violation of the right to freedom of expression, attacks the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arguing that the restrictions it imposes on access to internet content disproportionately harm the far-right leader’s supporters.

The report also cites the courts’ temporary blocking of the social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk, as an example of what it considers the “backsliding” of human rights in Brazil. “The courts took broad and disproportionate action to undermine freedom of speech and internet freedom by blocking millions of users’ access to information on a major social media platform in response to a case of harassment,” the report reads.

The State Department also believes the Brazilian government “undermined democratic debate by restricting access to online content deemed to ‘undermine democracy,’ disproportionately suppressing the speech of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro as well as journalists and elected politicians, often in secret proceedings that lacked due process guarantees.”

Furthermore, according to Marco Rubio’s department, the Brazilian government “did not always take credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses.”

The report also criticized Berlin for its restrictions on far-right speech. In Germany, the report states, “the human rights situation worsened” during the year due to “restrictions on freedom of expression” and “credible reports of crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism.”

The State Department presents its new “summary” report as more faithful to what U.S. law requires, which requires it to submit several annual reports on the state of human rights around the world: the general report and specific ones on issues such as human trafficking or respect for religious freedom. But critics counter the institution’s arguments by saying the changes reduce scrutiny of the world’s authoritarian regimes. Among other things, they point out, the sections dedicated to each country only cite a single example of the type of abuse they denounce, even though multiple cases have occurred. Previous editions listed different cases.

“The report demonstrates what happens when political agendas are prioritized over facts,” said Josh Paul, director of the non-profit A New Policy and a former State Department official who resigned in protest of U.S. policy in the Gaza war. “The result is a much shorter product that reads more like a Soviet propaganda communiqué than a document of a democratic system.”

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