State Department Releases 2007 Human Rights Report

The State Department has released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2007. The report details the current status of human rights practices in 196 foreign countries, including those that receive aid from the U.S., as well as member nations of the U.N. and several other countries. The first reports, issued in 1977, covered only the 82 countries receiving U.S. aid.

The annual report is compiled from reports of both human rights violations and successes filed by officials of U.S. embassies in the various countries. The staffs of the embassies gather the information, often at considerable personal risk, from a variety of sources including government officials, jurists, armed forces sources, journalists, human rights monitors, academics, and labor activists.

Drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the report covers individual, civil, political and worker rights. These rights include freedom from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, from prolonged detention without charges, from disappearance, slavery or clandestine detention, and from other flagrant violations of the right to life, liberty and the security of the person.

The U.S. government uses the Country Reports on Human Rights as a tool for shaping foreign policy, conducting international diplomacy, and making assistance, training, and other resource allocations.

Countries cited in the report as being the source of the most serious systematic cases of human rights violations during 2007 included North Korea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan. The concentration of power in the hands of "unaccountable rulers" tended to be the primary trigger of human rights violations in those countries, according to the State Department.

Also See: Universal Declaration of Human Rights
China Backsliding on Human Rights
Modern Slavery: People for Sale
Human Rights in North Korea (Civil Liberties)
Human Rights in Iran (Civil Liberties)