Rubio abolishes online channel for submissions of crucial information from civil society on abuses
(Washington, D.C., August 18, 2025): The State Department has shut down the Human Rights Reporting Gateway (HRG), an online portal that allows members of the public and non-governmental organizations worldwide to submit reports of gross violations of human rights by foreign security forces, said DAWN in a statement issued today. The Department has offered no explanation for the shutdown, nor even acknowledged it.
"The HRG shutdown deprives the Department of access to crucial information about human rights abuses that it otherwise would not receive," said DAWN Senior Advisor and former State Department official Charles Blaha, who worked to develop the HRG while he was in the Department. "Secretary Rubio has abolished one of the few channels for civil society and private individuals to submit evidence of abuses."
The State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor created the HRG in 2002 to comply with the Leahy Law provisions requiring the State Department to facilitate reports from the public about gross abuses by foreign security forces. The Leahy Law, a 1997 amendment to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, prohibits the U.S. government from providing military assistance to foreign security force units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations and requires the State and Defense Departments to submit annual reports to Congress on their compliance with the law.
"Coming on the heels of the woefully compromised 2024 Human Rights Reports, this is part of Secretary Rubio's push to defy U.S. laws requiring the State Department to report abuses by foreign security forces and to stop providing weapons to abusers," said Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN's Executive Director. "That is why DAWN is supporting a lawsuit against the State Department to compel Secretary Rubio to abide by the laws of our land."
