On March 30, the U.S. State Department published its 2020 Human Rights Reports—critical works that activists and scholars use to document human rights violations and ensure government accountability. This year’s publication comes after former President Donald Trump spent years eroding the documents’ quality and scope, including by cutting their coverage of reproductive rights. Now, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has promised to reverse course by expanding the reports’ coverage of women’s issues—but he will need to go farther in making human rights and the fight against sexual and gender-based violence a strategic priority.
