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Which countries did the U.S. State Department add to the human rights watchlist in 2024 or 2025?
Executive summary
CIVICUS added the United States to its Monitor Watchlist in March–May 2025 alongside several other countries; reporting lists repeatedly name the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Pakistan, and Serbia as co‑additions [1] [2]. The U.S. designation reflects CIVICUS’s concern about restrictive executive actions and rollbacks under the Trump administration; other human‑rights actors (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty) and many media outlets have discussed similar worries, while the White House rejected CIVICUS’s assessment [2] [3] [4].
1. What “watchlist” are we talking about — and who runs it?
The CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist is a research tool maintained by the global civil‑society coalition CIVICUS to publicize where civic space is deteriorating; it classifies countries by civic‑space status and in March 2025 placed the U.S. on its Watchlist as part of an update [5] [1]. This is an NGO monitoring product, not an official U.S. State Department designation or a sanctioning list; media outlets like TIME and The Hill reported the CIVICUS action as an international watchlist addition [2] [3].
2. Which countries were added alongside the United States?
Multiple outlets and CIVICUS’s own materials cite Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo), Italy, Pakistan, and Serbia as being on the same March 2025 Watchlist batch with the United States [2] [1] [6]. Newsweek and other summaries repeat that grouping [6]. Other CIVICUS Watchlist updates across 2025 list additional countries at different times (e.g., El Salvador appears in July 2025), but the primary March 2025 grouping widely reported includes Congo, Italy, Pakistan, and Serbia [7] [1].
3. Why was the U.S. added — CIVICUS’s stated rationale and reactions
CIVICUS pointed to “restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics” under President Trump’s second term and said these moves were creating an atmosphere chilling democratic dissent; it specifically cited mass firings, takeover of institutions, and cuts to aid and multilateral cooperation [5] [1]. Media coverage highlights CIVICUS’s framing of a rollback on civic freedoms; the White House called the assessment “nonsense” and defended the administration’s transparency [2] [3].
4. How do other human‑rights organizations and journalists frame the development?
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and major outlets used the U.S. inclusion to spotlight domestic concerns—border policy, reproductive‑rights restrictions, attacks on protest and press freedoms—and to critique shifts in U.S. human‑rights diplomacy under the Trump administration [4] [8]. Several commentators also tied CIVICUS’s move to a broader pattern of international concern about democratic backsliding globally [9] [10].
5. Is this a U.S. State Department “watchlist” or similar official U.S. action?
No U.S. State Department source in the provided results describes adding countries to an external watchlist; rather, the State Department produces the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and was itself criticized for changing the scope of those reports in 2024–2025 — a separate issue from CIVICUS’s watchlists [11] [12] [13]. Reporting notes that the State Department’s 2024 reports were significantly edited under the Trump administration, prompting debate about whether the U.S. was softening criticism of foreign governments while also facing scrutiny at home [13] [14].
6. Limits of the available reporting and competing perspectives
Available sources do not mention a single, authoritative list created by the U.S. State Department that “added” countries to a human‑rights watchlist in 2024 or 2025; the prominent additions cited in the query come from CIVICUS’s Watchlist [5] [1]. Sources diverge on interpretation: CIVICUS and many NGOs see the U.S. move as evidence of democratic erosion, while the administration rejects that framing — and some reporting highlights political motives and domestic partisan fights over how human rights are defined and reported [2] [3] [4] [15].
7. Bottom line for the original question
If by “the U.S. State Department add to the human rights watchlist” you mean countries U.S. officialdom designated in 2024–2025: available sources do not mention the State Department itself adding countries to an external “watchlist” during that period; if you mean which countries were put on CIVICUS’s 2025 Monitor Watchlist that included the United States, reporting lists the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Pakistan, and Serbia as co‑additions [5] [1] [2].