Some of the most dramatic and troubling elements of Secretary Marco Rubio’s reorganization proposal for the Department of State are the specific plans for the Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). Together, we have worked in the State Department for over half a century, including decades in DRL. We believe these proposed changes would gut the Department’s capacity to ensure that U.S. foreign policy and programs are consistent with universal values and our national interests, and would thwart some of the Trump administration’s own priorities. Congress should urge Secretary Rubio to modify the proposed plan in ways that would sustain bipartisan U.S. efforts to advance democracy and human rights across the globe.
Proposed Reorganization of DRL
In presenting his reorganization proposal, Secretary Rubio contends that the State Department has become too bureaucratic and fragmented in the ways it goes about trying to make and implement policy. He then claims his proposal will streamline the decision-making process by eliminating what he views as extraneous offices and largely integrating all work on “functional” or thematic issues under the aegis of the Department’s six regional bureaus and the embassies that report to them.
As for DRL, the reorganization proposal includes the following:
- Eliminates all but one of DRL’s offices, including DRL’s regional offices (which mirror the larger regional bureaus in the Department) along with the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs and Office of Global Programming (two of the bureau’s largest offices);
- Creates a new Office of Natural Rights (which will incorporate some of the staff from the two regional offices dedicated to Europe and East Asia and the Pacific);
- Renames the current Office of International Labor Affairs the “Office of Free Markets and Fair (sic) Labor,” which will “refocus” on “the promotion of free market principles” along with ensuring that “American work[er]s (sic) compete in a fair and open playing field;”
- Divvies up the current Office of Security and Human Rights (which has been responsible for vetting of security assistance for human rights compliance as well as making recommendations on human rights-based sanctions) among a new Office of Sanctions and Reports and a compliance office under the newly created Undersecretariat for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs (F); and
- Envisions that the DRL’s “remaining functions will be focused on advancing the Administration’s affirmative vision of American and Western values” under the supervision of a new Deputy Assistant Secretary for “Democracy and Western Values”
Some have estimated that these changes would result in an 80% reduction in DRL staff.
The plan also calls for the incorporation into DRL of the statutorily mandated Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF), Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP), and Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (SEAS). These offices do not appear to be slated for the same reductions as DRL offices. The result will be that the staff devoted to these specific human rights issues, while very important, will outstrip those devoted to the broader human rights issues covered by DRL.
The Regionalization of Human Rights Diplomacy
Consistent with his overarching vision, Secretary Rubio’s proposal aims to incorporate most human rights diplomacy under the regional bureaus and their corresponding embassies. As justification for eliminating DRL regional offices, Secretary Rubio has repeatedly argued that since embassies and State Department regional country desks also have human rights officers, DRL regional offices are redundant.
This ignores how the State Department really and effectively works. Regional country desks are responsible for contacts with their respective foreign embassies in Washington; embassies are responsible for contacts with the governments in those countries. This often results in desks and embassies seeking to accommodate the views of those governments, which generally resent criticism of their human rights records. This is an especially acute problem in cases where the United States has security relationships with foreign governments. The overriding imperative for those regional country desks and embassies is to smooth relations with those governments and militaries, and human rights concerns are often seen simply as bilateral irritants.
Moreover, embassy human rights officers are often relatively junior Foreign Service Officers who rotate through political sections every two or three years and often have relatively little experience in either the country in question or in human rights. Their concerns have much less influence within embassy country teams, especially compared to the U.S. colonels or generals responsible for promoting contact and relations with foreign militaries who commit human rights violations. DRL regional offices provide a valuable counterweight to the propensity of regional bureaus and embassies to avoid raising human rights concerns. Indeed, DRL helps those counterparts by taking on the burden of raising sensitive human rights issues.
What’s more, these DRL offices, which typically include civil servants, often have years of experience in the human rights issues of the countries they cover. Major missteps can be made even by professionals without that background. Among other duties, DRL personnel are responsible for maintaining contacts with non-governmental human rights organizations that are generally outside the country of concern and are experts on that country and region. In his congressional notification, Secretary Rubio accused DRL of being “prone to ideological capture and radicalism.” The truth is exactly the opposite — because of their experience, DRL officers know which of these non-governmental organizations are responsible and reliable, and which are not. These groups often play a key role in prompting congressional action. Losing knowledge of and relationships with these groups is likely to hamper the Department’s action on any number of other priorities.
DRL regional officers also play a central role in coordinating and sometimes drafting sections of the Department’s annual Human Rights Reports, which are among the most widely-read documents the U.S. government produces. Secretary Rubio’s plan envisions an Office of Sanctions and Reports responsible for “coordination” of “high-profile statutory reports,” but it would be very difficult to maintain adequate quality control of these reports without Department experts who know the human rights issues in countries being written about.
Elimination of Offices of Multilateral and Global Issues and Programming
Another radical element in Rubio’s reorganization proposal is the complete elimination of DRL’s Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs (DRL/MLGA) and Office of Global Programming (DRL/GP) – two of its largest offices. DRL/MLGA historically has had the lead in developing U.S. policy on human rights in multilateral fora such as the United Nations and a wide range of cross-cutting global issues such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of peaceful assembly; Internet freedom; transnational repression; business and human rights; protection of human rights defenders; corruption; and the human rights of marginalized persons including women, ethnic and racial minorities, persons with disabilities, and indigenous and LGBTQI+ persons. Given the Trump administration’s aversion to multilateral engagement and to addressing discrimination against disfavored groups, it is no surprise that this office is on the chopping block.
But DRL/MLGA’s whole-scale elimination undermines policy objectives Secretary Rubio himself has long espoused. For instance, in announcing a new visa restriction policy directed at those allegedly involved in curtailing Americans’ speech overseas, Secretary Rubio recently said, [f]ree speech is among the most cherished rights we enjoy as Americans. This right, legally enshrined in our constitution, has set us apart as a beacon of freedom around the world.” Yet elimination of DRL/MLGA would rob the Department of the very experts devoted to promoting that freedom globally. Similarly, officers devoted to long-standing bipartisan priorities such as transnational repression, the human rights risks of emerging technologies, and promoting access to and communication on the Internet for people in closed societies like China, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea would also be lost.
The Trump administration has also been unequivocal in its commitment to promoting American business abroad. In recent years, American companies have come to recognize the importance of promoting respect for human rights in their operations for both their reputations and effectiveness through initiatives such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (which most of the largest U.S. extractives companies have endorsed) and the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers (which private security contractors have been required to join if they wish to contract with the Department of State). MLGA also produces guidance for companies on hot button issues like artificial intelligence and surveillance products as well as business advisories on some of the countries with the worst human rights records. The abolition of the business and human rights team in DRL/MLGA would remove the very people who American companies have come to rely on to carry out these transnational efforts.
Abolition of DRL/GP and termination of the vast majority of the foreign assistance that supports human rights organizers and reformers in other countries is also highly counterproductive. Such assistance has supported, for instance, political prisoners and their families in a wide range of countries, journalists reporting on corruption, and the development of technologies to circumvent Internet restrictions in repressive countries like China, Iran, and Russia. In one emblematic case of which we are aware, the termination of assistance has meant that a young Yemeni activist, who is the sole supporter of her family and under threat from the Houthis —a group that Secretary Rubio himself designated as terrorist in March — is not receiving the emergency relief that was planned for her.
DRL/GP has also supported the rule of law globally, which is critical to ensuring the sanctity of contracts for American business abroad. Secretary Rubio’s plan calls for any such assistance to be managed by DRL’s Assistant Secretary and “front office” – but, simply put, senior leaders have neither the time nor expertise to implement such programs.
The “Office of Natural Rights”: A Gift to Rights Violators Worldwide
Secretary Rubio’s plan proposes creation of a new DRL “Office of Natural Rights” (DRL/NR) which, inter alia, “will ground the Department’s values-based diplomacy in traditional western conceptions of core freedoms” under the supervision of a Deputy Assistant Secretary for “Democracy and Western Values.”
This would represent a major break in how the U.S. government has traditionally framed human rights, which is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and deliberately not ‘’ “Western” or “American” values. A “Western” or “American” values approach to diplomacy is a complete gift to governments that commit human rights violations worldwide, who often resist U.S human rights efforts on the very basis that the U.S. is foisting foreign values on them. This would be especially damaging to our attempts to advance human rights in China, which frequently cites so-called “Asian values” as justification for its human rights violations. Ironically, the Department’s recent statement on the 36th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre suggests it may understand the problems with promoting self-described “American” values. The statement acknowledges that “the principles of freedom, democracy, and self-rule are not just American principles. They are human principles the CCP cannot erase.”
Secretary Rubio’s proposed reorganization also contains a puzzling emphasis on countering “free speech backsliding in Europe and other developed nations” as a DRL priority. U.S. human rights diplomacy already opposes restrictions on free speech, including in Europe. Surely, extrajudicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances, and other gross violations of human rights, most of which occur in areas outside Europe, deserve the Department’s highest attention.
Security and Human Rights
Under the proposal, personnel from DRL’s current Office of Security and Human Rights (DRL/SHR) would be divided up between a new Office of Sanctions and Reporting (DRL/REP) and the Under Secretary for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs’ new Office of Foreign Assistance Oversight Policy Group. However, it is unclear which of those offices will take on DRL/SHR’s high-profile Leahy law vetting operation, which annually vets tens of thousands of requests for U.S. assistance to foreign militaries and police worldwide and prohibits assistance to foreign security force units credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights. Here again, the elimination of DRL’s regional offices will have a negative impact, since they are most attuned to reports of human rights violations by foreign security forces, while embassies and country desks are, in many cases, reluctant to monitor and follow up on such reports in part because of the sensitivities in their direct relationships.
Furthermore, the reorganization plan makes no mention of which DRL office will assume the statutory responsibility to prevent atrocities under the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, or which office – if any – will assume SHR’s role in the Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance (CHIRG) process, responsible for monitoring and responding to reports of civilian harm caused by U.S. weapons supplied to foreign militaries. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Secretary Rubio’s reorganization would eliminate the CHIRG process.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Secretary Rubio’s current reorganization plan represents a grave diminution of the role of human rights in American diplomacy, and the risk of unintended consequences for embassies and regional bureaus. Congress should encourage Secretary Rubio to modify the plan laid out in the congressional notification, including by:
- Retaining as many regional and functional experts in DRL as possible, or at a minimum, transferring them to regional bureaus. This would sustain the critical capacity and expertise on human rights issues that Congress intended when it mandated the establishment of an Assistant Secretary devoted to human rights in the late 1970s and that it has strongly supported in bipartisan fashion ever since. While the Assistant Secretary title survives, the near-elimination of supporting infrastructure subverts the mandate Congress established when it created the position in statute.
- Maintaining foreign assistance funding administered by DRL, among other things, to promote core freedoms such as freedom of expression and freedom of association and public assembly; support human rights activists and their families in the world’s most repressive countries; and sustain independent civil society organizations that provide a bulwark against authoritarian governments.
- Continuing to anchor U.S. human rights diplomacy firmly on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights instead of supposed “American” or “Western” values, and focusing efforts on addressing the worst violations of human rights worldwide.
- Retaining the Department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance process and providing it additional resources, pursuant to a recent GAO recommendation.
These should be the minimum requirements for any State Department reorganization. They reflect long-standing bipartisan consensus on U.S. human rights diplomacy, and they serve American national interests.
