Assistant Secretary Michael H. Posner of Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor today announced the release of the 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
Mr. Posner stated that the report covers 194 countries in the world. The report is over 2 million words long, in excess of 7,000 pages. It is the reflection of tens of thousands of hours of work by hundreds of people, both in the Department and by human – by Foreign Service officers throughout the world.
“I want to just say a couple of words about the purpose of the report. Originally in the 1970s, two members of Congress, Don Fraser and Tom Harkin, now Senator Harkin, introduced legislation in Congress linking human rights to security and economic aid. The report came out of that, a desire to inform Congress of what’s happening in the world vis-a-vis these decisions about foreign assistance.” – Mr. Posner
According to Mr. Posner, it is the single most exhaustive report by human rights done by anyone anywhere in the world, based on a notion of fidelity to the truth.
Mr. Posner reiterated that the report is not a policy-making document. “It’s a document to give a clear and honest picture of what’s going on and a basis for a range of decisions by this government and others in terms of how to address human rights challenges we face in the world,” he said
