In a world where the actual news increasingly reads like a never-ending edition of The Onion, the United States Department of State has released its 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. This annual production casts Washington as the self-appointed global arbiter of human rights, passing judgment on every nation on Earth.
The report’s origins go back to 1977, when Congress required the State Department to assess the rights record of countries receiving U.S. foreign aid. Over the decades, its reach expanded to cover all countries—whether or not they receive a penny from Washington. This year’s report comes in the same year the U.S. slashed nearly all foreign aid—except, of course, the aid used to bankroll an ongoing genocide. That alone would make the exercise ironic enough to merit its own parody headline.
Yes, these reports contain some facts. But their emphasis, tone, and omissions are shaped by U.S. foreign policy priorities, not by an objective standard of human rights. Socialist and anti-imperialist states routinely receive the harshest treatment, their records filtered through the lens of Washington’s ideological hostility.
As has been the case for decades, the 2024 edition singles out Vietnam, Cuba, and China as among the world’s worst offenders. Never mind that Vietnam and China have led the globe in lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, or that Cuba—under an illegal U.S. blockade—sends doctors and nurses to disaster zones worldwide, provides universal healthcare, and offers free education to all. The report accuses these countries of lacking “press freedom,” yet remains silent on the fact that U.S. ally Israel regularly assassinates journalists, including those wearing clearly marked press gear, with weapons funded by the United States.
The section on Israel opens by citing Hamas’ October 2023 attacks and frames subsequent Israeli actions as unfortunate byproducts of that event—blaming the victim, and excusing the perpetrator. Israel’s well-documented crimes—from holding thousands of Palestinians without trial and running an entrenched apartheid system to ethnically cleansing the West Bank and committing genocide in Gaza live on global television—are either downplayed or reframed as security measures.
All of this is bankrolled by the United States, whose military aid to Israel never ceased after Donald Trump’s return to the White House–unlike the aid to clean up Agent Orange and unexploded ordinance dropped on Vietnam by the U.S. military. U.S. tax dollars fund the bombs dropped on children in Gaza, many literally signed by grinning U.S. politicians in pro-Zionist photo ops. Meanwhile, Washington shields Israel from accountability by vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, and threatening any international body that dares investigate Israeli war crimes.
At home, the United States’ own human rights record is nothing to boast about. It maintains the largest prison population in the world—disproportionately Black and brown—many held without ever receiving a trial. Under Trump’s second term, foreign students expressing political views opposed by the government have been detained without due process, and universities have been blackmailed into disciplining students with U.S. citizenship. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conduct raids across the country, “disappearing” and deporting people on the mere suspicion of being undocumented, often based solely on skin color or language.
And while blockaded Cuba can provide free healthcare to all of its citizens, residents, and even many foreign patients, the richest country in the world refuses to recognize healthcare as a human right. In the U.S., millions are left uninsured, forced into medical debt, or driven into poverty by treatment costs. These conditions would be considered a human rights crisis if they happened in an official enemy state.
The United States is in no moral or political position to judge the human rights of any other country. If its annual report were merely hypocritical, it might be laughable and truly worthy of The Onion. But it’s far worse than that: It is a propaganda tool that legitimizes wars, sanctions, and coups, while excusing genocide, inflicting real harm on the very humanity it claims to defend.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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