The U.S. State Department has released its annual Human Rights Report criticizing other countries for their conservative stances on human sexuality and sexual and reproductive rights (SRH). The Human Rights Report is a Congressionally mandated annual investigation into the human rights records of nearly 200 countries. As expected, the Biden report is informed by a progressive understanding of human rights that is inconsistent with established human rights law but which is consistent with the arguments of leftwing UN agencies and treaty monitoring bodies. Among other topics, the report investigates governmental compliance with “reproductive rights,” whether they offer legal recognition of people’s “preferred” genders, as well as whether they recognize sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) as special categories worthy of protection. None of these are established human rights. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken inaugurated the report saying that “There is much work to be done to uphold the rights set out in the Universal Declaration.” While UN member states never agreed to an international right to abortion, nor does the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights declare such a right, the Biden administration made abortion access a key policy priority and reinstated a section of the report dedicated to reproductive rights, initially introduced by Barack Obama and removed by Donald Trump during his administration. The report criticizes El Salvador for its abortion bans, reported on Hungary for “requiring women to view fetal vital signs before undergoing an abortion” and singled out Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Uganda, among others, for their lack of access to “sexual and reproductive health.”

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