Takano Blasts State Dept for Erasing LGBTQI+ Data from Annual Human Rights Reports

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Takano (CA-39) condemned the State Department’s erasure of LGBTQI+ people from the 2024Country Reports on Human Rights Practices:

“Omitting the persecution of LGBTQI+ people from the Human Rights Reports doesn’t erase the abuse, violence, and criminalization our community is facing around the world—it condones it,” said Rep. Mark Takano, Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus. “Erasing our community from these reports makes it that much harder for human rights advocates, the press, and the American people to be aware of the abuses LGBTQI+ people are facing worldwide. Failing to rectify this censorship will have real—and potentially deadly—consequences for LGBTQI+ people, including both for those who travel abroad from the U.S. and for LGBTQI+ people in countries whose leadership no longer need to worry about consequences for their human rights abuses. The State Department must reverse course and restore the LGBTQI+ section to these reports.”


BACKGROUND
Today, the State Department released stripped down versions of its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which excluded many key sections and subsections that had been included in previous reports. This included removing the subsection on Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, or Sex Characteristics. For a decade and a half, the Human Rights Reports have contained a version of this subsection—including during President Trump’s first Administration. This part of the reports have been an instrumental source of documentation of human rights violations and abuses against LGBTQI+ persons around the world.