Humans Right Watch in Their Annual Report Sharply Criticizes U.S. and Trump

The United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Adobe Stock)

 By Michael K. Lavers, Washington Blade Courtesy of the NLGBTQ Media Association

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Philippe Bolopion on Wednesday sharply criticized the Trump-Vance administration over its foreign policy that includes opposition to LGBTQ rights.

“The U.S. used to actually be a government that was advancing the rights of LGBT people around the world and making sure that it was finding its way into resolutions, into U.N. documents,” he said in response to a question the Washington Blade asked during a press conference at Human Rights Watch’s D.C. offices. “Now we see the opposite movement.”

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday released its annual human rights report that is highly critical of the U.S., among other countries.

“Under relentless pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders have come to rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms,” said Bolopion in its introductory paragraph. “To defy this trend, governments that still value human rights, alongside social movements, civil society, and international institutions, need to form a strategic alliance to push back.”

The report, among other things, specifically notes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Skrmetti decision that upholds a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.

The Trump-Vance administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights, and the U.N. Human Rights Council. Bolopion, in response to the Blade’s question during Wednesday’s press conference, noted the U.S. has also voted against LGBTQ-inclusive U.N. resolutions.

Maria Sjödin, executive director of Outright International, a global LGBTQ and intersex advocacy group, in an op-ed the Blade published on Jan. 28 wrote that the movement around the world since the Trump-Vance administration took office has lost more than $125 million in funding.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded myriad LGBTQ and intersex organizations around the world, officially shut down on July 1, 2025. The Trump-Vance administration last month announced it will expand the global gag rule, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services, to include organizations that promote “gender ideology.”

“LGBTQ rights are not just a casualty of the Trump foreign policy,” said Human Rights Watch Washington Director Sarah Yager during the press conference. “It is the intent of the Trump foreign policy.”

The report specifically notes Ugandan authorities since the enactment of the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023, which punishes “‘carnal knowledge’ between people of the same gender” with up to life in prison, “have perpetrated widespread discrimination and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, their families, and their supporters.” It also highlights Russian authorities “continued to widely use the ‘gay propaganda’ ban” and prosecuted at least two people in 2025 for their alleged role in “‘involving’ people in the ‘international LGBT movement’” that the country’s Supreme Court has deemed an extremist organization.

The report indicates the Hungarian government “continued its attacks on and scapegoating of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people” in 2025, specifically noting its efforts to ban Budapest Pride that more than 100,000 people defied. The report also notes new provisions of Indonesia’s penal code that took effect on Jan. 2 “violate the rights of women, religious minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and undermine the rights to freedom of speech and association.”

“This includes the criminalization of all sex outside of marriage, effectively rendering adult consensual same-sex conduct a crime in Indonesia for the first time in the country’s history,” it states.

Bolopion at Wednesday’s press conference said women, people with disabilities, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups lose rights “when democracy is retreating.”

“It’s actually a really good example of how the global retreat from the U.S. as an actor that used to be very imperfectly — you know, with a lot of double standards — but used to be part of this global effort to advance rights and norms for everyone,” he said. “Now, not only has it retreated, which many people expected, but in fact, is now working against it, is working to undermine the system, is working to undermine, at times, the very idea of human rights.”

“That’s definitely something we are acutely aware of, and that we are pushing back,” he added.

Story courtesy of the Washington Blade via the National LGBTQ Media Association. The National LGBTQ Media Association represents 13 legacy publications in major markets across the country with a collective readership of more than 400K in print and more than 1 million + online. Learn more here: https://nationallgbtmediaassociation.com/.