The State Department is Cutting Out Human Rights Abuses from Annual Reports

The State Department’s Human Rights Reports were mandated by Congress in 1974 to ensure funding did not go toward torture, involuntary detention, and suppression of fundamental freedoms. The reports collect information on human rights abuses around the world. But this year’s human rights reports were created under completely rewritten instructions, featuring a huge reduction in information on human rights abuses. Amanda Klasing, National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy at Amnesty International USA, sits down to talk with us about these devastatingly slashed human rights reports.

The reports provide a human rights overview for any given country for the year, and they require human rights desk officers in embassies to engage with human rights defenders within the country and document any abuses. This allows Congress to make fact-based decisions and protect asylum seekers. This year’s human rights reports featured a complete rewrite of the instructions for dramatically reduced sections related to fundamental freedoms for particular populations (including women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and more). The reports are 1/3rd shorter than they were before.

LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Amnesty International USA on Facebook
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U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Report Puts Politics Above Human Rights 
Leaked U.S. State Department Human Rights Report Reveals Alarming Omissions on Global Violations  | Amnesty International USA
State Department slashes reports on human rights violations : NPR
Congress Must Reject Trump Administration's Reckless Plans to Reorganize State Department | Amnesty International USA

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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

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Jennie: Hey rePROs, how's everybody doing? I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and these are my pronouns, she/her. So y'all, it is September. I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around that. Like, it feels like it was, honestly, it feels like it was just the beginning of the year. I'm not really sure where this year has gone. This summer, like, disappeared in a blank and I know I feel like I say that all the time and it just feels especially true this year, like, I can't believe the cruise I took with my mom that was in April, and it feels like it was a years ago. Like, it feels so far away. Yeah, I just having a little hard time believing that it's September which means this year will be over before I know it and it's all gone so fast. That's okay, I am holding on to my very chill vibes after having five days off for the long holiday weekend. I took a very long holiday weekend. It was so nice. I didn't really do anything super exciting. Just enjoyed this unseasonably gorgeous weather in DC. Like, it is very not normal weather. It's usually so hot and humid right now, but it is not. I have my windows open and, like, going outside is kind of delightful. It's just been really nice, and I hope it sticks around. Like, I hope we're done with the gross weather. I really love what we've had for the last couple weeks. It's been so, so nice. Let's see. I'm trying to think. I didn't really do anything super exciting. Like I said, I spent a little time outside. I've had my windows open, did some reading, hung out with the kitties. I didn't really feel like baking this weekend, so I didn't do any baking. Oh, the big thing I did, I had a big project. I felt like I needed a bookcase that would go behind my desk where I could put one, my one bookcase I have was overflowing with books. So, I needed another bookcase. But I was also thinking if I had one behind my desk, I could highlight the awards for the podcast on it. So, they would be behind me on my background. And then two, I have like a shelf where I could have all of my reproductive justice books all in one place that are right there. So, I ordered a bookcase, and I obviously had to put it together. So, that was my Monday project. And y'all, it took so much longer than I thought. Like, projects like this always do. It ended up taking me like three hours to put it together and then like get it all decorated and stuff. But, but I did it all by myself. I did it all in one go. Like there was no, oh shit, I messed this up. I have to take this apart and redo it and do it correctly. I didn't have any of that. So that was really delightful. Like I always feel like when you have those kinds of projects, there's always at least one part where you're like, oops, that's backwards or that shouldn't be there. But I didn't have that. And so, it's gorgeous. I love my new bookshelf. Maybe I'll have Elena share a picture on social [media] so you can see my cute new bookshelf or bookcase. I keep calling it a bookshelf, but it's a bookcase that I put together. I really love it. The kitties already, like, inspected it as soon as they were done. I was their entertainment on Monday while I was putting it together they both were like watching trying to help the whole three hours which was super helpful probably part of why it took three hours to put it together and then Cinder was in it before, like, as soon as it was, like, placed on against the wall where I was going to have it. Like, two seconds later, she was like, oh great this is a new place where I can sit and hang out but now that there's books in it she doesn't quite fit anymore, so she hasn't been doing that. But it meant that some stuff got relocated, like, reorganized a little bit so there's a chair right next to it where I keep my backpack that I take to work and that she has decided is, like, a great bed. So, as long as they're happy, whatever, but I love my new bookcase. I'm so proud of myself for putting it all together all by myself without any, like, I mess this up and have to redo it. So, that was my holiday weekend. It was pretty delightful and I'm trying to hold on to that vibe as all the chaos around us is continuing. I don't really want to focus on any of that because, like I said, I'm trying to hold on to my chill vibes right now. That said, we are going to talk about not chill things during the interview but it's a really great conversation so I'm very excited for y'all to hear it. I had previously talked about on the podcast that the State Department released the new human rights reports and how they had changed them so I thought we should have somebody who knows so much more about it than I do and come on and talk about what happened and why the human rights reports are important to begin with. And I couldn't think of a better person to have come on than Amanda Klasing with Amnesty International US to talk about the new State Department Human Rights Reports. So, let's go to my interview with Amanda.

Jennie: Hi Amanda, thank you so much for being here.

Amanda: Hi, I'm so excited to be here.

Jennie: I am too. I feel like it has been forever, so I am really excited. Before we get started, do you want to take a second and introduce yourself?

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Amanda Klasing. I am the National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy at Amnesty International USA.

Jennie: So, there has been a lot going on. The State Department released their new Human Rights Reports. There's a lot of things going on in them, but I feel like before we get to what happened, I bet a lot of our audience doesn't know what the Human Rights Reports are or why they're important. So maybe we should back up and start there. What are the Human Rights Reports?

Amanda: Yeah, it's a great question. So, we don't always think about them that much because they're sort of like the air we breathe. Why? Because they have been mandated by Congress since 1974. There were some kind of changes to it. But in 1976, under the Carter administration, all of a sudden the United States started reporting on human rights around the world. They did so because Congress wanted to make sure that they had the information they needed to make funding decisions. They wanted to know what the human rights context was in any given country, and they wanted to ensure that taxpayer money wasn't going to an abusive regime. They wanted to make sure that if we were going to send hard-earned funds somewhere, that they weren't going to lead to torture or involuntary detention or suppression of fundamental freedoms. And these reports grew over time to include a number of really important issues for communities that maybe weren't represented in them in the original conversion. The reports themselves are important because they provide an overview of the human rights context in any given country around the world for a snapshot of a year. And that feels important, but the process behind them is really what makes them a powerhouse within the human rights movement. So, every year around July, there are human rights desk officers and embassies, and they receive instructions from headquarters in DC about starting to gather information about the Human Rights Reports. This starts a process where embassies should be engaging with human rights defenders, civil society, and others within a given country to find out what has happened in the last year. What should be the concern for the US policymakers tracking human rights? What needs to be included? That engagement with civil society is really key. It's also an opportunity for civil society around the world to dock in with their documentation of human rights abuses. This is a space where you elevate and ensure that if we write a report, we assume a country might see it. We try to get it in the hands of policymakers there. But if the United States amplifies that in its human rights report, we know that it's going to get paid attention to. So, these reports and the process behind them aren't the only way that human rights are reported around the world, but they're a really fundamental part of how civil society is able to elevate and amplify what's happening in their country. And then that gives Congress the information they need to make policy decisions and their funding. These reports are also really important for asylum cases, and not just in the United States. Asylum judges around the world, we know shore in Canada and the UK and Australia rely on these reports and making determinations about whether a person might have a credible fear of being returned to a particular country. And they certainly are important in the United States as well in that context.

Jennie: I also feel like they're really important outside of the U.S. government. Do you want to talk a little bit about how they are used not just by the U.S. government, but by people around the world?

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. So, just taking it from the context of an individual advocate in a particular country, and I'm going to focus on advocates, for example, on gender justice, because that is something we'll learn, was cut from the recent report. So, if you work for an organization that's advocating for the rights of survivors of gender-based violence, and you are able to engage with the U.S. government and say, these are all the different ways that my government has failed to address the crisis of gender-based violence in my country. And here's what we've documented. These are the cases that we're having difficulty with. And then that information actually is reported in the annual report. You have an opportunity to go back to your own government and say, like, it's not just us, not just us, small civil society, singular voice telling you that you have a problem and you have an obligation to fix it. The United States government is saying this. And it also allows those groups to work with advocates like advocates in the United States to seek funding sources, to actually design programs to support legal reform or services for survivors. There are many different ways that once that information is adopted within a report, it gives advocates and also organizations that implement programs additional leverage point to both get attention and action on their issue.

Jennie: Okay. So, that's why they're important and why we should care. So, let's talk about the new Human Rights Reports just came out and [are] different this year. What happened?

Amanda: Oh, are they different. Okay. So-

Jennie: I know, I feel like it's like a bucket list, right? It's like, where do you start?

Amanda: Where do you even start? All right. So, I'll start with what we were expecting. So, Human Rights Reports, as I said, the process starts sometimes I'm in July. Instructions go out. So, these take a long time to write, and they're huge. It's massive amounts of work. There's lots of clearance processes that occur, but at the embassy level, and then here in Washington, D.C., at the State Department, it's not just like one person reviews, it goes out. There are just levels and levels and levels of review, and you're updating it throughout the entire year, so it's a full snapshot of the year. So typically, the instructions go out under one administration, and even if an administration changes, the reports are written under that instruction and released accordingly. Congress mandates that they're released at the end of February. It almost never happens. But that's the process. And it may be that the incoming administration doesn't love how the instructions were written. It may be that they need to add a small instruction so that you have a little bit more. But we've never seen a complete rewrite of the instructions. Even in the first Trump administration, Secretary Tillerson came in and launched more or less the reports that were written prior. So this year, we started to hear that the process had been paused. Not only had it been paused, but new instructions had been issued out. And those new instructions weren't just to add a few things that were consistent with this administration's policy. It was to dramatically reduce sections related to fundamental freedoms, as it's termed in the State Department, to particular populations, including women, children, LGBT people, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, Indigenous peoples, racial minorities. It was an overall rehaul of what was deemed important human rights and important people whose rights should be protected. So, we were concerned about that. Now the argument was this was going to be a reduction back to what is the statutory minimums. What is it that Congress has said we have to report on? We're just going to report on that. And we're going to increase efficiencies because of that. But embedded in this instruction was something else that was interesting. And there were 20 chapters that were identified for additional review by a political appointee. And that was, I think we all read these instructions as being political in nature, but that in particular identified that something was going to be different about these reports. They were going to be crafted and edited according to a particular worldview that may or may not reflect the internationally recognized human rights under which these reports are typically developed. And then there was silence. I just weren't sure what was happening. And again, these reports were already written. Many, many people hours had gone into it. And now all of these additional people hours were put into stripping out work that had already been done. And when I say stripping out work, I'm talking about stripping out abuses, people's actual cases, the documentation of maybe the worst thing that's ever happened in somebody's life and they were able to ensure that the US government saw it and reported it in these draft reports and that was being left on the editing floor. And this was happening over the course of months— we were like, where are these reports? What is happening with the reports? And dribs and drabs of information was coming out of the State Department. Well, they're stuck in this review. Well, they're stuck in that review. It turns out not just those 20 countries, but all of the reports were reviewed at the highest level from a policy consideration. Now, what are some of these countries? Well, some of these countries that are going to be reviewed are countries where, for example, the administration wants to send people to be deported. These are countries that the US has either particular, that this administration has particular affinity for, or for whatever reason wants to embarrass for, you know, we'll talk a little bit about human rights challenges that previously had not been identified as a human rights abuse. And so, that's what we were all hearing. And then we actually got the reports on August 8th. And they, in many ways, are devastating. Some of the chapters you're reading, you're like, oh, well, that's more or less what we would have said about this country. It actually doesn't read so... so inaccurate, but what you don't realize is all the things that had been edited out. So, they're about a third shorter than they were before. And like you and I are writers, we write things, we understand how editing works, and everybody wants something easier to read, something that flows well, and that is partially what the argument was. These were behemoth reports, and they just weren't easy to read or accessible. These reports were not like beach reading, like these reports. That is not the purpose of these reports. These reports are not joyful and like, you know, lovely things to unwind with at the end of the day with a cup of tea. These reports were written in a particular way, and people used the sections that they needed. And it was never intended to be an editorial.

Jennie: You didn't sit down and read the whole thing. Like, this wasn't...

Amanda: Yeah. So, you know, the argument that sometimes less is more, and that is precisely what the State Department spokesperson said the day that the reports were released, is just not the case. In this case, like, less is less. Less means that an abuse against an LGBT person in a particular country is gone. Less is that, you know, an illegal land grab that led to abuses against Indigenous peoples is gone. It means that child abuse within the context of non-state actor, and I'm thinking in particular of Haiti, is gone. So, you have a chapter in Haiti that doesn't mention anything about violence against children when we know that children have been heavily targeted by the violence that is happening in Haiti. So, less is just less. And on top of that, some of the chapters are just political fictions. El Salvador says that there are no significant reports of human rights abuses. Yeah, no, sure, sure, sure. When we know that there's... there's torture, extrajudicial killings, and unlawful detentions, right? The Israel, Gaza, and Palestine, or Gaza and West Bank chapters are shocking misrepresentations of the current context in Gaza, but more generally about the human rights context there. Germany and other Western European countries are being called out for their curtailment of freedom of expression, and as significant human rights concerns. And so now we're left grappling with: what do these reports mean? And what does it mean for the civil society groups that engaged with the process and have been eliminated from the outcome of their work?

Jennie: I think the other thing I think about as well is we talked about how important they were and that this was a trusted document that people counted on and were used in so many ways. Businesses used it when they were trying to decide whether to work with a country. Asylum courts used it when they were trying to decide whether to grant somebody asylum. But now people are maybe having their trust shaken in this document that has been around for so long. What does that mean going forward? It's hard to rebuild that kind of trust that this is a factual document that you can use to determine whether you work in a country or not when now there's political interference in it.

Amanda: Yeah, I know. I mean, I think we're all trying to figure out: what does it mean when government information is untrustworthy? Whether it's, you know, jobs data or human rights reports. You know, and I want to be clear, the human rights record of the United States, regardless of the administration has been checkered, right? And so, I think there's this, if you're not terribly familiar with the reports and the content of the reports and the process of the reports, but you are familiar with human rights policy of many different administrations of the United States, you're like, why would these be so trusted by civil society? And if you go into the reports, the reports don't always reflect the policy, the overall policy of the US government when it comes to an individual country. So, the US has a deep relationship with India, but the human rights reports have in the past been very critical of the Modi government and dismantling of homes and the anti-Muslim violence that has occurred. And there's a tension point, and that tension point oftentimes makes uncomfortable relationships for ambassadors. Ambassadors don't love these reports. These reports make them have to have conversations that are contrary to their overall goals with a particular in the short term. And another thing that I would flag is the Israel, Gaza, and West Bank chapters last year contained a lot of important information that the overall U.S. government was not comfortable really advancing broadly in their language and reporting. And so they've never been perfect, but they really are a much... better encapsulation of the human rights context, then you would see maybe the outcome of what is being said at the top in the National Security Council or the State Department. So, moving into your question about the trust relationship then. So, there is a trust relationship that was established with these reports, even if there was disconnect in the U.S. government policy. And where do we go from here? Well, one thing to know is that in asylum decisions within the United States, not only would there be these more robust reports in the past, but asylum judges could also take into consideration other civil society reporting. So two things have happened at the same time. We have drastically reduced reports and dictates from DHS that asylum decisions should be based only on the State Department report. So, there's no way to supplement the information that has come out. And that's going to be disastrous because one thing that you could do is just supplement with other reporting, but that there's nowhere else to supplement or you're not permitted to supplement. The other thing to note is, you know, this is happening in the context of a complete dismantling of the human rights ecosystem. And so, there are many different ways that documentation happens and that the US becomes aware, or the world, the global kind of movement on human rights becomes aware of a human rights context or abuse. And part of that is civil society that is collapsing under both the abrupt cuts from US foreign assistance and also the ripple effects that that has even on organizations that don't receive US government funding. And so not only is it going to be harder to functionally kind of supplement the human rights findings that are no longer in those reports and kind of asylum claims, or for businesses to go and seek additional information. There's not like a clear pathway where this information will all be gathered and collated. There's also just gonna be a supply-sec problem. There are just fewer resources to document human rights abuses. And so, what that means is as a, not just as a country, but certainly as the US government and those of us that operate within the civil society ecosystem here, but globally too, we're gonna have less visibility over, in particular, the abuses against the most marginalized populations around the world. And I can talk more about that, but that's what keeps me up at night. This is just a harbinger of what's to come. And what's to come is that after years of building global transparency around what human rights abuses look like, not just for high level political or labor or journalists, kind of activists in a particular country, but for everyday people, we're going to lose that.

Jennie: I also found it interesting NPR had a great piece breaking down, like, what exactly happened in the reports. And so, you know, we talked about entire sections disappearing, like gender and LGBTQ rights and so many others. But also what was reported, they scaled back on examples given. And I think that's one of those things that people may not understand. Why shouldn't there just be one example? Shorter is better, right? Maybe you can talk a little bit about that because I also find that part really troubling because to me, then you lose sense of scale. But I'm sure you all have a much better way to talk about why it's so important.

Amanda: Yes. So, losing sense of scale is definitely a part of it, but it's also more about what makes it a human rights abuse. So, we've had this conversation with the State Department in the past. The State Department, there is a kernel of truth that there is a desire that has existed for years to make these very unwieldy reports something more contained. In the past, however, there have been consultations with civil society, and civil society makes all the arguments as to why scaling down to one emblematic case creates a challenge for civil society and country to make end roads on advocacy or for the global movement. And part of the important reason is that when you have one emblematic case but don't really embed it into a broader understanding of context, a government can say, oh yes, we're aware of that case, it's one bad apple. And they can have, just if you have an emblematic case, they can have an emblematic prosecution or an emblematic release from detention and say, see, we're good. We've moved on. Let's go ahead and sign our critical mineral deal or whatever it is. So, that's one reason why having one emblematic case creates a problem. Another is for certain human rights abuses, it is about a pattern of government failure to to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and punish a particular type of human rights abuse. And gender-based violence is a great example. It actually took decades for gender justice advocates to help the human rights movement understand that what previously was understood as a private crime— so intimate partner violence or even sexual violence as happening between two private individuals— is actually a human abuse when taken into context of a government that has not taken the steps to prevent it or to respond to it. And you have to understand patterns and scale and breadth of a problem in order to make the argument that it has gone from a private crime or a bad apple to a systemic human rights problem that requires the government to address it. And so, when you start to reinforce the idea that one emblematic case is all that is needed to understand a human rights context, you also are reinforcing the idea that by just addressing that one problem, the country will have resolved it. It also doesn't give us a sense over time about progress. And these reports aren't intended to show evolution over time, but you can see, well, okay, last year there were all of these different cases, and it does seem like we aren't seeing the same sort of pattern this year. We're only seeing… you know there's still a few challenges but there's been a shift and that’ll be gone.

Jennie: Yeah, no, I think that is so important it was just one of those things that really struck me as I was reading through that NPR piece was like, oh this seems this seems like a problem on top of all of the other problems. Is there anything else that you have been thinking about moving forward or thinking about this current version of the Human Rights Report?

Amanda: You know, there's always things within the report, like we want more, right? Like, and I think there's always the argument, like civil society, we always want more. We always want more. And what I think that I have been proud of as a kind of ecosystem is that over time, the human rights movement has helped shift these reports so that they are more inclusive of the broadest scope of a population. And, you know, when you only focus on certain civil and political rights, it's often the people that have been able to leverage power to get into a position where they actually have political rights that are visible to the US government. And so, there has been this really important shift where how these reports demonstrate a particular human rights context actually gives you a fuller picture of what is happening in that particular country. And as I said before, I really, I worry about what it means to go back to a context where only a few people and only a few types of violations matter and get visibility because that hides a whole host of truly atrocious and violent abuses that undermine the dignity of people. And I think the question in the back of everybody's mind is like yes, but what does it matter to me if I'm an American sitting in the United States? That's not going to have business interests in a particular country. That's not going to be seeking asylum. Like, why does this matter? And not to instrumentalize it but when you ignore a whole host of a population and rights violations against them, it may mean that you still are able to advance American interests in the short term, but people do not suffer lack of human dignity for the long term without there being repercussions. And those repercussions can bring great instability in the world. And in the past, again, the US has a checkered history with human rights, but in the past, in many contexts, there were people around the world that believed that the US cared about human rights, about their human rights, and had drew hope from that and also looked to the US as a champion for human rights. And that's why the pushback when the US fails to uphold human rights is so strong is because there's a disconnect from what people believe or see the US trying to promote itself as and the reality of it. And I think this kind of strips away the final shred of belief that the global community had the U.S. actually cares about human rights.

Jennie: Yeah, it also takes me back to the first Trump administration and the Commission on Unalienable Rights, and that there is a "hierarchy" of human rights, and not all of these are actually human rights, and it's putting me back in that space, and this is a clear example of instrumentalizing that.

Amanda: Yeah, and you are right to be back in that space, because not only has all of this happened to the Human Rights Reports, but it's happened under a state reorganization process that Rubio implemented that reduced the Human Rights Bureau within the State Department by 90%. And the policy office of that Bureau is now named the Office of Natural Rights. And the policy office went from having 100 people to having eight people. And when you ask what are “natural rights,” because human rights are an internationally agreed upon framework so that all rights holders and all governments understand what standard they're being held to, and the US was instructed in the negotiations and development of that framework. And this office is brushing that aside for an idea of natural rights. Now, they're trying to say, that's just the philosophical underpinning. We still believe in human rights. But a philosophical underpinning is not universal. It's very relative. And so how you ensure, and this is, I always think about rights holders, and I think when people talk about cultural relativism, like, well, human rights don't need to mean the same thing everywhere. Like, this is just the imposition of Western values on countries around the world. And I kind of think about it in the context of girls that I've interviewed around the world about child marriage. And I guarantee you that universality is important to those girls. That cultural relativism, having a different set of human rights based on where you live, is not A, at the heart of what human rights are supposed to be about, and B, is not going to lead to a safer, stronger, and more prosperous world or United States. And so, yes, you're right to hearken back to that prior enterprise of Commission on Unalienable Rights because we're seeing that 2.0 and this idea of "natural rights." And I think we're going to see more of this language coming out in President Trump's address at the UN General Assembly in September. I think we're going to start to see a United States that understands human rights as only instrumentalized and only something that governments bestow upon their population within the confines of what they believe is culturally acceptable. And so I had somebody explain it to me this way. It's the “you do you,” human rights. You do you, we do we, and let's not get up in each other's business when we're detaining people, mass carrying people, marrying children off, preventing people from living their lives without discrimination because that is culturally acceptable there and culturally acceptable here. So that's upcoming, folks.

Jennie: Yeah, and I know this goes without saying, but just to make it clear, since this is a sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice podcast, that obviously LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights under this framework are not actually seen on that same level. They are seen as lesser rights back from the Commission on Unalienable Rights and Natural Rights.

Amanda: I would push back on that even more and say they are not seen as rights. They are seen, and I believe the terminology was like political questions for society to determine. And so again, this goes to, you know, we're in a world where people's basic right to determine things about their body, about their lives and who they love are not even seen as inherent to their dignity. So, I'm sure as we learn more about what natural rights mean, you'll have other conversations with folks, but just a reminder that not only it, was the Commission on Inalienable Rights kind of proposing a certain hierarchy of rights. It was also proposing a totally different understanding of when rights attach. And so, in particular, the right to life attaching at conception and rather than at birth and what flows from that as far as not just restrictions on people's reproductive choices, but affirmative obligations of the state protect the right to life from very, very early intervention into a pregnancy.

Jennie: Okay, that is all terrible. So, I always try to end with, if not hopeful, but action-oriented. So, what can the audience do? How can they get involved either in this conversation or this fight or whatever? What can they do about this?

Amanda: Yeah. Well, I think there was a human rights constituency that was built over a period of time out of this belief of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the building of a human rights infrastructure, the need for this sort of international cooperation to increase the dignity of all around the world. And that had a lot of traction, I think, in communities around the United States. And it was nonpartisan and bipartisan in many ways. Now, of course, abusive policies were also bipartisan in a lot of ways, but there was something there where people agreed upon fundamental human rights. And so much so that I think we forgot that we had to reaffirm our commitment to these rights. And so one thing that I would just suggest is, really go and read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and encourage other people to do so. Familiarize yourself with the idea that in 1948, countries around the world, and it was a complicated time in colonial history, but it was also a diverse set of countries that were negotiating, a diverse set of actors negotiating these terms. And so, understand that these rights are not going to be protected just like the Constitution is not going to be protected if we don't actually know what's contained in it. So, that's just one thing. Just know that these rights matter and that they exist and you should know what they are. And they cannot be taken away by a government, even if they try to. They're inherent to us as people. And then, that's my spiel, that these are not partisan. They shouldn't be, they weren't before, let's move forward with that. That said, there is some legislation that has been introduced, at least currently, maybe by the time this airs, it'll be introduced in the House but there is some legislation that has been introduced to try to reintroduce the different sections that have been stripped from the report. And that is a bill by Senator Shaheen on reintroducing the integrity of human rights into the process. And I would encourage everyone to ask their senator to approve that, or to co-sponsor it, and then if it were ever to get to the floor to approve it. The other is just to continue to look for other sources. I think a lot of people actually use, like students and others, actually use the human rights reports as a reference or for a variety of starting points to understand the context of a country. And so go to other civil society documentation organizations, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First and Committee to Protect Journalists and Freedom House. There's so many. Really understand that the story is not completely told by these reports anymore. And then be on the lookout for how this could get worse. We've been told that these are just re-edits and re-writes this year, but the next year's reports are going to be worse. And members of Congress need to hear from them that they won't tolerate it. This is mandated by Congress so that we ensure that our taxpayer money is not going to contribute to human rights abuses. And if your member of Congress is getting bad information from a political report, they need to understand that Americans are listening and are not going to sit back and let this kind of false narrative about human rights be perpetuated.

Jennie: Thank you so much. Those are all really great things to think about, and actions people can take. Amanda, thank you so much for being here. It was so great to talk to you.

Amanda: It was wonderful to be here. I wish it was about something more uplifting, but I am an eternal optimist. All human rights people need to be. And so, I do think this is a moment for us to reaffirm and really recommit to the universality and importance of human rights and ensure that we are pushing back and building forward. Thank you.

Jennie: Okay, y'all. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Amanda. It was so great to get to talk to her. It had been a while. We used to sit in coalition and see each other a lot more. So, it was nice to get to talk to her after a long time not being able to catch up. So, that was so much fun. I hope you enjoyed our conversation, and I will see everybody next week. If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at rePROs Fight Back on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and want to make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you want to make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all.