Perspective: Moldova's Human Rights Report Card
Why we can't trust, but also can't ignore, the State Department's new human rights reports
Last week the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) released their annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Traditionally these reports have been seen as the gold standard on the state of human rights in a given country. They have been used in national and international court cases and are regularly cited by NGOs and politicians around the world. Typically, these reports are published in March or April each year, but the Trump administration chose to delay the publication of the report in order to make substantial changes. We’re going to take a look at what the Moldova report card can tell us about this, and what is says more broadly about the state of American foreign affairs.
Moldova’s Report Card
We aren’t going to dive deeply into the content of the 2024 report here today. If you’d like to read it, you can find it online here - it’s short. In essence highlights some persistent problems that the report notes the government is working to address but only slowly. It spends much more time on Transnistria and highlights numerous problems in the breakaway region.
The key line in the executive summary though is the first one:
“There were no significant changes in the human rights situation in Moldova during the year.”
This is the same line that opens the 2023 human rights report on Moldova… and it’s about the only thing they have in common. While the report indicates no major changes, the content and structure of the report itself is wildly different.
Firstly, the length. The 2024 report is 16 pages long while the 2023 report runs 58 pages. This partly reflects a far less detailed approach to the topics covered, but mostly it reflects restructuring. These sections were completely removed from the most recent report:
Corruption
Political Processes (free and fair elections)
Discrimination
Women’s Rights (rape and domestic violence)
LGBTQ+ Rights
Disability Rights
While it would be lovely to think that corruption is simply no longer a problem in Moldova, anyone living here knows that’s not what’s going on. The removal of these sections was a political decision. One of a number of extremely troubling changes that were made to these reports. Decisions that represent not only a reprioritization, but a redefinition of “human rights.”
Let’s take a look at the process that led to this point and what it means for countries like Moldova going forward.