Evergreen explainer. The State Department’s annual human rights report, formally the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, is among the most widely used government documents on the subject in the world. They are also a political document: they are written by one government, about almost every other, and the way they are written changes with each administration. This page explains how the reports are made, what changed in the edition released in August 2025, what critics and the department say about it, and what is still unknown. It covers developments up to September 30, 2026.
It is one of four explainers that start from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which coordinates the reports. Because the subject is the U.S. government’s own reporting, we rely on the department’s published notes, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and independent reporting and analysis, and we flag where a view is one party’s. See the Investigations hub for the series.
Contents
- 1. Key takeaways
- 2. What the reports are and who writes them
- 3. What changed in the 2024 edition (released August 2025)
- 4. Critics’ views
- 5. The State Department’s answer
- 6. Examples: China, North Korea, Israel, El Salvador and Europe
- 7. The late 2025 reports
- 8. Documented, alleged and disputed
- 9. Timeline
- 10. Frequently asked questions
- 11. Key sources and related coverage
- 12. Note on method and status
1. Key takeaways
Key takeaways
- Legal basis: The reports are required by the Foreign Assistance Act and the Trade Act of 1974. CRS says they are due by 25 February each year, though release has often slipped to March or April.
- The 2024 edition was cut back: Released on 12 August 2025, it was “streamlined,” in the department’s words, to be “more responsive to the underlying legislative mandate and aligned to the administration’s executive orders.” It dropped dedicated sections on several rights that earlier editions covered.
- Critics say the changes are political: Freedom House said sections on assembly and association, election abuses, corruption and more were dropped. Former officials and some lawmakers raised integrity concerns. A department spokesperson said no country is “singled out for condemnation or singled out for praise.”
- Some things did not change: The China report still states that genocide and crimes against humanity occurred in Xinjiang, and statutory topics such as transnational repression are retained.
- The next edition is late: As of mid-September 2026 the report covering 2025 had not been published, about seven months past its statutory date, according to the Korea Economic Institute of America.
25 Feb
Statutory deadline
Per CRS and KEI
12 Aug 2025
2024 edition released
About six months late
~198
Countries covered
Per KEI
7 months
Delay of 2025 edition
As of 17 Sep 2026, per KEI
2. What the reports are and who writes them
The State Department’s own explanatory notes say the reports cover “internationally recognized human rights and worker rights” and are submitted to Congress under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974. CRS says two provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act, sections 116 and 502B, form the legal basis. Both date to the mid-1970s and were written to keep U.S. aid from going to governments with “a consistent pattern of gross violations.” Congress has added required topics over time, including coercion in population control, refugee protection, antisemitism and press freedom. In December 2023 it added transnational repression.
Drafting starts with U.S. embassies, which use guidance issued each year by DRL. DRL staff edit the country texts with other State offices, and the Department of Labor contributes expertise on worker rights. The DRL “Free Markets and Fair Labor” office says on its State Department page that it leads production of a worker-rights section of the reports (the office’s page calls it Section 7; the 2024 edition’s explanatory notes list worker rights under subsection 2.b). Sources include embassy reporting, governments, international organizations and NGOs. The department’s notes say reports “do not state or reach legal conclusions,” and that credibility is hard to judge because “most governments and opposition groups deny” abuses while opponents “may have incentive to exaggerate or fabricate” them. The reports do not rank countries. That separates them from the Trafficking in Persons Report, which assigns tiers, and from the religious freedom designations. See our explainers on scam compounds and trafficking and on the CPC list.
3. What changed in the 2024 edition (released August 2025)
The department’s notes say that “in March 2025, the report was adjusted” and that the reports “were streamlined for better utility and accessibility in the field and by partners, and to be more responsive to the underlying legislative mandate and aligned to the administration’s executive orders.” The appendix says the reports “minimize the amount of statistical data,” select “illustrative examples of alleged abuses” and follow up in most cases only on “high-profile unresolved allegations from previous years.”
According to CRS, the 2024 reports no longer contain dedicated discussions of several rights that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights covers and that earlier editions included even though no statute named them: fair trial rights, privacy, freedom of assembly and association beyond worker rights, freedom of movement, and the right to participate in public affairs and elections, among others. CBS News and CNN report that sections on discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender-based violence, government corruption, systemic racial or ethnic violence and denial of a fair public trial were also dropped or sharply cut. The text on forced labor and on religious freedom is now largely replaced by links to the TIP Report and the International Religious Freedom Report.
| Topic | Earlier editions | 2024 edition (Aug 2025) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assembly and association (non-worker) | Dedicated section | No dedicated section | CRS; Freedom House |
| Elections and political participation | Dedicated section | No dedicated section | CRS; Freedom House |
| Fair trial; privacy; movement | Dedicated subsections | No dedicated discussion | CRS |
| Corruption; LGBTQI; gender-based violence | Dedicated coverage | Omitted or sharply cut | CNN; Freedom House; BBC |
| Transnational repression | Added by Congress, Dec 2023 | Retained | CRS; Freedom House (says coverage is uneven) |
| Forced labor; religious freedom | Full text | Links to TIP and IRF reports | State Dept notes |
Length changed too. The Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI) reports that the North Korea report was cut in half and that the Israel, West Bank and Gaza, and Hungary reports were cut by 93.5, 89.3 and 75.6 percent respectively, citing its own comparison. Freedom House says the country reports were “effectively cut by more than half in length.” These are analysts’ calculations, and we did not reproduce the measurement.
4. Critics’ views
- Freedom House (14 August 2025): said the reports “risk dramatically curtailing the credibility and legacy” of the effort, that dropped sections include peaceful assembly and association, election abuses, corruption and protections for minorities, and that cutting prison conditions, fair trial and retribution against human rights defenders comes when the State Department estimates more than one million political prisoners worldwide. It also said transnational repression coverage is “nominally retained” but often lacks specificity.
- Former State Department officials: Uzra Zeya, a former senior official who now leads Human Rights First, told the BBC the changes amounted to “gutting” decades of work. Michael Honigstein, a former Africa director in DRL, told CNN, “We were asked to edit down the human rights reports to the bare minimum of what was statutorily required.”
- Reporting on softer and harsher treatment: Reuters, the BBC and CBS report that criticism of El Salvador and Israel was reduced while Brazil, South Africa and some European allies received stronger criticism, including over free speech.
- Congress: CRS says in October 2025 several Members wrote to Secretary Rubio expressing “deep concern regarding the integrity” of the reports, while other Members praised their readability. A bill, S. 2611, would add required topics.
- Staffing: CRS says the 2025 State reorganization closed most DRL offices, including regional offices focused on human rights in specific countries, and some observers argued this risked undermining report quality. CNN reported that many staff who worked on the drafts were dismissed the month before release, and that Secretary Rubio did not write an introduction to the report, breaking with precedent.
5. The State Department’s answer
The department’s position is that the reports were improved. A senior State Department official said the 2024 report “has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability and is more responsive to the legislative mandates,” and that “U.S. policy on promoting respect for human rights around the globe, or in any particular country, has not changed,” as quoted by CBS News. Asked about claims that reports were watered down for partners, spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the reports should be viewed as “an indication of our point of view in general, that there’s no country that is singled out for condemnation or singled out for praise,” according to CNN. The UK government, which the report says saw its human rights situation “worsened” over expression rules, responded through a spokesman, quoted by the BBC, that “free speech is vital for democracy around the world including here in the UK.” Both the UK and Brazil have previously rejected similar U.S. criticism, the BBC noted.
A fair reading. Both things can be true: the reports can be more readable and statutorily focused, and they can also reflect a change in emphasis. CRS makes a related point: the 2024 reports “contrast with” the long trend of expanding coverage, and some critics argue that country assessments shifted with the government’s relations with Washington. The department denies that. This page does not adjudicate motives.
6. Examples: China, North Korea, Israel, El Salvador and Europe
China. The 2024 China report, part of the same edition, says “genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year” against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, and lists “trafficking in persons, including forced labor.” It also cites NGO and academic findings on labor transfers. That is a U.S. determination; China denies it. See our Xinjiang explainer for the UN and Chinese positions.
Europe. CNN and the BBC reported that the UK, France and Germany reports said the human rights situation had worsened, citing limits on expression under online hate speech rules, a theme also voiced by senior U.S. officials. The UK says it upholds free speech.
Israel. The BBC said the report reduced criticism of Israel, said the conflict “led to a rise in reports of human rights violations,” accused Hamas and Hezbollah of war crimes (both deny), and omitted reference to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas figures. Israel and Hamas have both rejected the allegations behind those warrants, the BBC noted.
El Salvador. CNN reports that the report said there were “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in 2024, while also noting reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. The previous year’s report was about four times as long. Amnesty International has accused El Salvador of arbitrary detentions and inhumane detention conditions, according to the BBC. We did not find El Salvador’s official response in the sources we opened.
7. The late 2025 reports
Under U.S. law the reports are due by 25 February. KEI wrote on 17 September 2026 that the report for 2025 is about seven months overdue, and a web search for this page found no release as of 30 September 2026. CRS, in its December 2025 update, said the State Department reportedly issued internal instructions in November 2025 asking missions to report on topics including diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the prevalence of abortion and gender-transition surgery among children. CRS said it was unclear whether the administration intends to restore any of the rights dropped in 2024, and the instructions drew sharp criticism from some human rights groups. That is press-reported; we did not see the instructions.
Why it is late is not stated in the sources we opened, and we found no official explanation.
8. Documented, alleged and disputed
| Claim | Status | Who says it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The 2024 reports were “streamlined” and adjusted in March 2025 | Documented | State Dept notes | Department’s own words. |
| Dedicated sections on several rights were dropped | Documented | CRS; State Dept notes; Freedom House | Consistent across independent sources. |
| Changes were politically motivated | Contested | Critics, former officials; department denies | Motives are not documented; the department says policy has not changed. |
| Criticism of some allies was softened, of others sharpened | Reported; disputed | Reuters, BBC, CBS, CNN; department rejects the framing | Interpretation; department says no country is singled out. |
| Reports cut in length by large percentages | Analyst calculation | KEI; Freedom House | Methods differ; we did not recompute. |
| Genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang | U.S. finding | State Dept China report | China denies; the UN did not use the term. |
9. Timeline
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-1970s | Sections 502B and 116 of the Foreign Assistance Act require human rights reporting | CRS |
| Dec 2023 | Congress adds transnational repression reporting | CRS |
| Apr 2024 | 2023 edition released | KEI |
| Mar 2025 | Department says the report was “adjusted” | State Dept notes |
| 12 Aug 2025 | 2024 edition released, “streamlined” | BBC |
| 14 Aug 2025 | Freedom House publishes its assessment | Freedom House |
| Late Oct 2025 | Members of Congress write to Secretary Rubio about the reports’ integrity | CRS |
| Nov 2025 | Reported internal instructions for the 2025 reports | CRS |
| 25 Feb 2026 | Statutory deadline for the 2025 edition passes | KEI |
| 17 Sep 2026 | KEI says the report is seven months overdue | KEI |
10. Frequently asked questions
Where can I read the reports?
The State Department hosts the 2024 Country Reports by region, with explanatory notes and an errata list.
Do the reports rank countries?
No. CRS says they do not compare or rank countries. Tiered rankings appear in the Trafficking in Persons Report instead.
Does the U.S. report on itself?
No. We found no U.S. country report in the set we reviewed. The DRL Key Topics page instead carries a fact sheet on non-governmental organizations in the United States, which describes U.S. civil society and its regulation.
11. Key sources and related coverage
Key sources and further reading
- State Department: 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (with explanatory notes and errata)
- State Department: 2024 report on China
- State Department DRL: Key Topics
- State Department DRL: Free Markets and Fair Labor
- Congressional Research Service: Global Human Rights, Country Reports (IF10795)
- Freedom House: Assessing the damage from changes to the State Department’s human rights reports
- BBC: Trump administration rewrites and scales back annual human rights report
- CNN: State Department human rights report scaled back
- KEI: Delayed 2025 human rights report
Related on Peter’s World
- Investigations hub
- Xinjiang Forced Labor: What Is Documented, Alleged and Disputed
- Scam Compounds and Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia
- Religious Freedom Designations: How the US CPC List Works
- UN Mission Finds Grounds U.S. Committed War Crimes in School Strike, a UN finding about the U.S. itself
- IRGC Investigation: Crimes Against Humanity and Genocidal Intent
12. Note on method and status
This page is an independent explainer compiled from public sources; allegations are not findings of guilt. Last updated: Sep 30, 2026.
Method: claims are attributed to the named source. Single-source items are flagged. The page-length percentages rest on one think-tank analysis (KEI). The November 2025 instructions and the dismissal of staff are press or CRS reports that we did not verify independently. The Reuters article and the CBS News page did not load in full for our tools, so the Reuters and CBS points rely on search-result excerpts and are corroborated by the BBC and CNN where possible. Corrections are welcome through our Contact page.