U.S. Human Rights Reports Drop Women’s and Girls’ Sections for First Time in Decades

For decades, the U.S. State Department’s human rights reports have been a trusted benchmark for documenting injustices around the world. But on Tuesday, the State Department released its long-delayed 2024 human rights reports, unveiling significant changes from prior editions that critics say represent a devastating erasure of women and most minorities from the United States’ official accounting of global human rights violations.

Among the most controversial changes, say former senior officials and human rights advocates, is the complete elimination of the standalone section on women's rights in each country report — a move that former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Geeta Rao Gupta warned signals to repressive governments worldwide that “women’s human rights do not matter.”

“Many of the horrors experienced by women will go unreported and unseen. Even worse, the perpetrators responsible for those actions now know that the U.S. is turning a blind eye to those atrocities, further supporting their impunity,” Gupta said during a Tuesday press conference hosted by The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, which More to Her Story was granted access to attend.

The potential consequences of this erasure are already stark. The Papua New Guinea (PNG) report, for instance, does not mention women at all despite the country's historical and widespread gender-based violence. According to a 2024 country report released by Human Rights Watch earlier this year, violence and lawlessness have "exacerbated pervasive sexual and gender-based violence in PNG," which also boasts one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the southwestern Pacific.

"The very women activists and advocates who have provided our embassies with the data on what's happening, those human rights defenders, those peace activists, they have not been mentioned at all in these reports," Gupta said. "There is no mention of the courage of women, as women are not just vulnerable, they are also leaders in their communities that have spoken up about these issues. They are survivors and fighters, and none of that is being communicated."

The cuts go far beyond women’s rights. Although the reports were largely completed before President Donald Trump began his second term, they underwent sweeping revisions in recent months that stripped out sections on racial and ethnic discrimination, child abuse, and other key protections. Critics warn these omissions will obscure serious violations and embolden abusers.

Compared to the 2023 edition, the new reports significantly reduce accounts of human rights violations of certain U.S. allies, notably Israel and El Salvador, the latter of whose 2023 report detailed widespread abuses — including arbitrary killings, mass detentions, torture and dire prison conditions — while the 2024 report claimed “no credible reports” of such abuses and omitted key sections such as sexual and gender-based violence, due process violations and the rights of journalists and those with disabilities. Indeed, the 2023 El Salvador report devoted more than 1,100 words to detailing the injustices faced by women and girls — from femicide and domestic violence to barriers to reproductive healthcare. In the 2024 edition, women are mentioned just twice, in generalized terms that advocates say dangerously downplay the scale of the problems they face.

Thomas Pigott, Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the department, said in a State Department press briefing last week that the changes were aimed to make the reports "more readable" and aligned with the administration's priorities, insisting the process was "not political."

Echoing this, spokesperson Tammy Bruce described the restructuring as aimed at moving away from what she called “an expansive list of politically biased demands and assertions.”

Yet former officials strongly disagree.

“The claim that they [the U.S. State Department human rights reports] had to be rewritten because they were drafted by partisan actors in the State Department is demonstrably false,” said Jessica Stern, a former U.S. Special Envoy. “In reality, they were written by career public servants at U.S. embassies worldwide, and vetted line by line by experts across the state department to ensure accuracy and credibility.”

Abby Finkenauer, former U.S. Special Envoy for Global Youth Issues, said the removal of sections on child abuse and sexual exploitation was “horrifying” and called for bipartisan outrage.

“I would argue that this Administration requires very tough questions on why they don’t value looking into sexual exploitation of children around the globe,” she said.

For decades, these yearly reports have been a trusted resource for governments, advocates, researchers and international bodies seeking accountability and up-to-date insights on the state of human freedom. Critics warn the removal of dedicated sections on women and other marginalized groups goes beyond routine streamlining, amounting to a narrowing of the U.S. government’s human rights focus, making it harder to track certain abuses and risking emboldening those responsible.

Annelle Sheline, who resigned in March 2024 from her position as a Foreign Affairs Officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, said: “By significantly reducing the scope and depth of the reports, the revisions make them less useful for advocates.”

Sheline added that while many governments knew U.S. policy was unlikely to change because of the reports, “governments would often protest or contest the reports when they were released, demonstrating that they were taken seriously. By stripping the reports down to mockery of their former manifestations, governments and other actors engaged in abuse will have gotten the clear signal that they will face no consequences from the U.S. for human rights abuses.”

“There’s a lot of pressure now on advocacy organizations and activists around the world to try and gather that data on their own and speak up against the U.S. government, which is no small task,” said Gupta.

Editor’s Note, August 13, 2025: This story has been updated to include comments from an additional public official.