When Marco Rubio, then a Florida senator, appeared as a potential nominee for secretary of state, many folks within the human rights neighborhood have been cautiously optimistic. In comparison with different potential nominees, Rubio was identified in Congress as a robust, if inconsistent, advocate for human rights. He knew the internal workings of U.S. human rights constructions and may be counted on to talk forcefully to the federal government’s obligation to guard human rights, usually reaching throughout the aisle to take action and demonstrating that rights are nonpartisan.
Quick-forward to as we speak, and Secretary of State Rubio seems to have fully deserted the ideas that he apparently held within the Senate. Although he as soon as proclaimed that “[t]he United States should stay adamant within the protection of human rights,” as secretary of state, Rubio not often mentions rights—until to impugn them as a part of some so-called woke agenda. As a substitute, he has taken on a unique slogan: “We’re not right here to play social employee. We’re right here to win.”
With so a lot deal with the administration’s militarized and sometimes illegal overseas coverage—together with the invasions of Venezuela and Iran and tons of of extrajudicial killings in airstrikes at sea—it’s straightforward to miss the destruction that Rubio has triggered to the diplomatic system that provides options. However over the previous almost 18 months, Rubio has led an all-out assault on human rights in U.S. statecraft, largely bypassing Congress to take action.
Rubio has slashed overseas help and humanitarian assist, decimated human rights applications addressing the whole lot from torture to atrocity prevention, politicized the division’s annual human rights stories, gutted key human rights workplaces and bureaus, withdrawn or disengaged from international human rights methods on the U.N. and elsewhere, and threatened worldwide justice mechanisms, all whereas selling a obscure “pure rights” framework to supplant the idea of worldwide human rights.
At this level, he have to be seen because the chief architect and implementor of dismantling the State Division methods that have been designed to uphold and interact the rules-based order that protects human rights and promotes international peace and safety.
As secretary of state, Rubio has overseen a maximalist interpretation of President Donald Trump’s govt orders—mainly, the slashing of overseas assist applications. Nobody was ready for Rubio’s chaotic implementation of Trump’s Day One govt order titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Overseas Assist.”
Rubio’s zealous and merciless overapplication of the order required already-funded humanitarian and improvement applications to cease instantly, inflicting monumental struggling. Lifesaving medicine have been minimize off. Some stories emerged of hospitals eradicating IVs from sufferers’ arms. Home violence shelters, rape survivor companies, and torture rehabilitation facilities shuttered, leaving even little one survivors of sexual violence and folks at excessive danger of suicide with out care.
U.S. overseas assist wanted reform, however Rubio’s cuts have been akin to burning down a home to repair a leaking sink. The size and pace of the cuts created a life-threatening vacuum. Organizations scrambled for carve-outs and waivers, filed lawsuits, and tried to maneuver backdoor offers. Others fired almost all their employees.
No quantity of bureaucratic wrangling may circumvent Rubio’s subsequent act, carried out hand-in-glove with Elon Musk: the full destruction of the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement. Regardless of Rubio’s claims in any other case, folks died because of this. Certainly, ending what had been Washington’s flagship technique of saving lives could finally be seen as one of many deadliest human-made disasters in trendy historical past, estimated by some researchers to finally result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and gutting civil society around the globe, with penalties persevering with to mount.
The result’s, as Human Rights Watch framed it, “each autocrat’s dream.”
Perversely, whereas Rubio suffocated lifesaving assist applications, he additionally oversaw the approval of $30 million of U.S. assist to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Basis, which operated militarized “assist distribution” websites, within the neighborhood of which the U.N.’s high human rights workplace reported greater than 2,000 deaths in 4 months. This upside-down world has grow to be Rubio’s calling card: sacrificing lives to advance untested and irresponsible experiments.
Rubio concurrently dismantled the human rights infrastructure of the State Division itself. With out formally involving Congress, he fired employees en masse and eradicated or drastically lowered workplaces and bureaus that superior ladies’s equality; pushed for accountability for and the prevention of atrocities; and advocated for democracy, human rights, labor, and refugees—to call just a few.
Rubio claimed that such capabilities had been moved underneath regional bureaus and missions overseas, however that by no means occurred. Now, dwindling numbers of overworked particular person human rights staffers wrestle to maintain up with portfolios that have been beforehand tackled by entire groups. Worse, no one works on some points in any respect.
One human rights program at the State Division that survived Rubio’s wrecking ball is the congressionally mandated annual human rights stories. Beforehand, the stories—although not good—catalogued the state of human rights in international locations around the globe, forming an important useful resource not just for diplomats however additionally for everybody from lawmakers making funding choices to U.S. buyers doing due diligence to courts assessing asylum claims.
Now not.
Rubio—who had praised earlier iterations of the stories as a senator—has rendered them unrecognizable, openly prioritizing political agendas over constant accounting of human rights violations around the globe.
The first annual nation stories launched underneath Rubio, protecting 2024, eradicated complete sections, together with reporting on discrimination towards ladies, youngsters, folks with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ folks, and stopped assessing the conduct of elections.
They additionally selectively targeted on violations in some international locations whereas ignoring them in others, relying on the administration’s political targets. For example, the stories blatantly sanitized the information of Trump-allied governments in El Salvador, Hungary, and Israel, making it simpler for the administration to deport folks or ship weapons to locations the place authorities violate human rights.
Leaked directions for the subsequent stories—protecting 2025—recommend an much more ideological and skewed interpretation of human rights, together with such absurdities as requiring insurance policies like affirmative motion to be reported as human rights violations whereas barring mentions of infringements on the appropriate to the liberty of meeting.
According to Trump’s “America First” agenda, Rubio has enforced a go-it-alone overseas coverage that treats worldwide legislation and human rights as a constraint, not a precept. Whereas Trump withdrew the nation from the U.N. Human Rights Council, the World Well being Group, and UNESCO, Rubio walked away from a slew of U.N. our bodies specializing in youngsters in armed battle, sexual violence in armed battle, and violence towards youngsters, amongst others.
Some of Rubio’s withdrawals have been overtly performative and racist, akin to when he cited “DEI mandates” as justification for leaving our bodies akin to the Everlasting Discussion board on Individuals of African Descent, a physique of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which the United States had already left. Rubio is nonetheless overseeing a overview of U.S. participation in hundreds of different conventions, treaties, and organizations—once more an overzealous execution of an govt order.
Underneath Rubio, for the primary time, the United States has additionally refused to take part within the United Nations’ Common Periodic Overview (UPR) course of, a cornerstone of the worldwide human rights system. Though a handful of nations have did not take part at sure phases of the UPR course of, each U.N. member state has engaged in the UPR since its first cycle started in 2008. The unprecedented U.S. boycott places the complete mechanism in danger. If america absolutely abandons the UPR, different governments around the globe that violate human rights will cheer and certain observe go well with. Certainly, some have already approvingly famous Rubio’s sanctioning of Worldwide Prison Court docket judges.
It appears that Rubio merely doesn’t imagine in worldwide human rights legislation and establishments based mostly on common ideas in any respect. Positive sufficient, his State Division now advances a obscure idea of “pure rights,” even including an “Workplace of Pure Rights” to steer coverage for the dramatically lowered and restructured Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
“Pure rights” are allegedly grounded in human nature and divine order, and in apply accrue solely to sure folks—specifically, Western Christians. They’re a direct affront to the idea of common human rights based mostly in worldwide legislation. In addition they assist clarify Rubio’s selective software of rights, from bragging about extrajudicial killings in U.S. airstrikes at sea, to revoking visas from protesters with whose speech he disagrees, to sanctioning activists combating extremist and anti-vaccine disinformation on-line.
U.S. overseas coverage has lengthy been rife with contradictions round human rights, and a few of the gravest latest wounds to common norms started underneath Rubio’s predecessor, Antony Blinken. Now, underneath Rubio, the State Division seems to be very close to to giving up on human rights solely. Regardless of a few situations the place coverage choices have aligned with human rights advocacy asks—akin to, for a lot of teams, sanctions towards varied dangerous actors in Africa and Latin America—Rubio has contributed to large-scale erosion of U.S. human rights management, weakened international human rights mechanisms, undermined cooperation overseas on human rights, and hamstrung Washington’s capability to reply to abuses.
Taken collectively, Rubio’s most enduring legacy could find yourself being the collapse of U.S. capability to form and implement international norms and insurance policies on the U.N. and different areas.
None of this advances U.S. pursuits, nevertheless it does open a path for different governments to exert their visions of human rights. Certainly, China’s authorities—an egregious violator of human rights—is vocal and current at human rights convenings the place america is just not, and in June, it launched a brand new five-year nationwide human rights technique. In distinction, on the identical day, Rubio made certainly one of his uncommon mentions of rights—a throwaway reference at an occasion marking a partnership with the Final Combating Championship.
This doesn’t must be Rubio’s legacy. The trendy human rights system emerged from the devastation of a horrific world struggle. International locations agreed on inherent rights that have to be granted common safety so each particular person can stay freely, equally, and in dignity, no matter who or the place they are.
This extraordinary achievement—the Common Declaration of Human Rights and the system that adopted—occurred with U.S. management. Now Rubio has a alternative: whether or not the United States, with him as secretary of state, will be instrumental in its destruction.
