The Trump administration has removed all references to violence against LGBTQ+ people and gender-based violence in drafts of the State Department’s much anticipated annual report on international human rights.
The draft of the report, which was leaked to and first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, scales back its critiques of abuses in countries with a record of human rights abuses. In particular, the Post learned of drafts of human rights reports for El Salvador, Israel and Russia that completely excise references of LGBTQ+ people and violence toward those communities.
The erasure of LGBTQ+ people and the abuses they face in the draft report underscores the Trump administration’s intention to scale back references to human rights broadly and take its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda worldwide.
“The 2024 Human Rights report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability and is more responsive to the legislative mandate that underpins the report,” a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief the news media, told reporters on Wednesday. “The human rights report focuses on core issues.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
