Human Rights Person

Back in January, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, Paul O’Brien, declared that the United States was experiencing “a human rights emergency.” The latest data from the Human Rights Measurement Initiative’s (HRMI) Rights Tracker, released in June, support that statement. Indeed, the new US data show that the country is performing quite poorly across a wide range of human rights and, on civil and political rights, experienced a serious decline in 2025.

Now, over at The Conversation, some of HRMI’s methodology leads (myself included) have written up two articles reflecting on where the United States’ human rights performance stands as the country celebrates its semiquincentennial.

Back in June, Stephen Bagwell and Susan Randolph discussed the United States’ performance on economic and social rights, finding that the US tends to lag behind its peers on those rights. You can check out their article here.

And today, I have published an article discussing the United States’ performance on civil and political rights. In short, HRMI data show a large decline in the US’s respect for civil and political rights across eight of the nine rights measured in 2025, one of the largest declines across the board in the project’s history. You can dive into my article here.