U.S. State Department Annual Country Conditions Reports for 2024 Erases LGBTQI+

by Melanie Nathan, August 17, 2025.

If ever there was a time to report human rights abuses against LGBTQI+ people globally, it would have been March 2025, when the usual annual State U.S. Department of State Country Conditions Human Rights Reports should have been released reflecting on 2024. This has been the practice for a very long time.

Every year there is a Section in the human rights reports for each country entitled:

"Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, or Sex Characteristics,"...

In general the section includes the following:

-Criminalization:

-Violence and Harassment:

-Discrimination:

-Availability of Legal Gender Recognition:

-Involuntary or Coercive Medical or Psychological Practices:

-Restrictions of Freedom of Expression, Association, or Peaceful Assembly:

This year the Trump Rubio State Department took until AUGUST (5 months late) to issue a watered down ineffective set of reports, which purposely excludes the above sections.

BAM! Gone! Vaporized! Erased.

These reports have served as critical go to research for people like me when in my expert witness work as a country conditions expert for LGBTQI+ asylum seekers from 20 different African Countries.

I am not defeated by it because our work at African Human Rights Coalition empowers me with even more data and details than the State Department ever served up. However, their reports served to validate much of our assertions over the years. I am, however, very concerned for other experts who do not have access to AHRC data and who are now deprived of a critical source, globally.

This is yet another recent example of how America under the Trump regime has lost its standing as a global leader on Human Rights - its an embarrassment and shameful. With funding AHRC can make its data more widely available. That is something we will work on this coming year, to try and close this shameful gap!

COUNTRY CONDITIONS EXPERT WITNESS

CONTACT: Melanie Nathan, B.A. LL.B  commissionermnathan@gmail.com

Melanie Nathan, Executive Director of African Human Rights Coalition is a qualified country of origin expert witness in the United States and global immigration courts, providing expert written country conditions  reports and testimony for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, non-binary, LGBTQI + asylum seekers from African Countries, to include those perceived as such,  activists, allies and human rights defenders.

Melanie also consults multinational corporations regarding briefings and policy for operations and issue impacted by anti-homosexuality laws and country conditions. SEE HERE

Angola, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea-Conakry, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Ghana,  Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Tanzania, The Gambia,  South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe