24 May 2012: ai, reports, usdos

AI releases Annual Report 2012, USDOS releases 2011 human rights reports

AI’s country chapters are now added to ecoi.net, the USDOS reports are currently being uploaded on ecoi.net.

The USDOS has improved the readability of this year’s reports with a new layout. Additionally, the USDOS states on the contents:

“Over the past 35 years, the length of the human rights reports had expanded, even as Congress mandated separate annual reports on the status of international religious freedom and human trafficking. This year, we have developed a streamlined format for each country report. As a result, we do not attempt to catalog every incidence, however egregious, of a particular type of human rights abuse in a country. Rather, we spotlight examples that typify and illuminate the types of problems frequently reported in 2011 in that country. The mention of fewer cases in a particular report should not be interpreted as a lessening of concern for the overall human rights situation in any particular country. Rather, our goal is to shed light on the nature, scope, and severity of the reported human rights abuses. For the first time, we have also added an executive summary at the top of each report.” (USDOS, 24 May 2012)

[Blog-post updated 25 May 2012 with quote from USDOS introduction]