In what could be seen as an effort to respond to the March 11, 2009 edition of the U.S. Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights, Ecuador has promised to publish its own human rights counter-report. This initiative is meant to assess Washington's own respect for human rights from an outside perspective and is meant to be a necessary response to the State Department's often imprudent document. Also, the very next day, March 12, China published "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009."

At the least, this flap indicates that the report released by the U.S. has been suffering from a generalized lack of legitimacy, not only in the Latin-American region but also throughout the world. Egypt, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador and China are only a few of the countries that have taken some form of exception to the US global evaluation.*

The underlying thrust of this general rejection by a number of countries is that Washington should not have unilaterally assumed a condemnatory role regarding the subject because the US tends to be selectively indignant when it comes to its own policies toward the allegedly offending nation.

State Department's Human Rights Assessment

to quote from China's report on the US ....

The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing as "the world judge of human rights" again. As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 is prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States.

US Human Rights Record in 2009