Transparency in the Leahy Laws: Who is Banned?

By Adam Keith and Suchita Uppal

Each year, the U.S. government provides billions of dollars in training, weapons, and other assistance to foreign security forces – including in countries where such forces have been accused of torture, rape, and extrajudicial killings. To guard against U.S. complicity in such abuses, Congress enacted the Leahy Laws – two provisions requiring the Department of State and the Department of Defense to withhold assistance from any specific unit of foreign military or other security forces that is credibly implicated in a gross violation of human rights.

Recent press reporting has called into question whether these laws are being consistently implemented, though, especially where close U.S. partners are concerned. Public disclosure of which units have actually been banned under the Leahy Laws is limited, further fueling these doubts.

Since 2011, the State Department has been required by law to publicly disclose the identity of units denied assistance under the Leahy Law “to the maximum extent practicable.” The only exception is where the Secretary of State determines that such disclosure would harm U.S. national security. When the State Department uses that exception, it must at least confidentially disclose the banned units to the relevant congressional committees, along with a detailed written justification. Former U.S. officials say the exception is not intended to shield sensitive diplomatic relationships from embarrassment, but rather to protect the sources and methods used to obtain information about the violations.

The State Department first published an annual list of units subject to a Leahy ban in 2017, six years after the disclosure requirement took effect. Since then, it has published such lists on a roughly annual basis, but often with significant delays. The most recent list, for calendar year 2022, was published in December 2023, and neither the Biden administration nor its successor have published lists covering 2023 or 2024. Unfortunately, the law contains no formal timeline for public disclosure and no obligation to explain delays.

As of today, the State Department has publicly named 113 units as barred under the Leahy Law, which we have compiled in a tracker. Among the higher–profile units named is Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion, notorious for its extrajudicial killings and banned from receiving U.S. assistance in 2018.

Many of the listed units, though, are from countries that presumably have less political leverage or fewer sensitivities in their relations with the U.S. government. Local police stations in Central America and the Caribbean, for example, appear in large numbers on these lists. Notably underrepresented or absent from the lists are units from some countries whose security forces are the leading recipients of U.S. assistance and which have well-documented records of abuse. That includes Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the Philippines – though Mexico has more units on the public lists than any other country.

Overall, this is a very small number of publicly named banned units, especially given that former State Department officials say that thousands of units are considered ineligible for assistance under the Leahy Law. Those former officials have told us this imbalance is likely not, though, a result of overusing or misusing the national security exception.

Other practices may be contributing to the shortness of these lists. First, former U.S. officials have told us that the State Department  “suspends” a unit from receiving assistance when there is a lack of internal consensus about its eligibility, rather than proceeding to formally “reject” it based on consensus that the unit should be barred. Such a suspension is a good result, in that it prevents U.S. assistance from flowing to alleged abusers. But because units that are merely suspended do not appear on the public disclosure list, or even have to be disclosed confidentially to Congress, the practice arguably complicates oversight of the law’s implementation.

Second, some major partners – specifically, Egypt, Israel, Ukraine, and Jordan – receive U.S. security assistance in a way that means “individual or unit-level recipients cannot be identified in advance” when the assistance is provided. That does not mean that U.S. assistance to those countries is exempt from the Leahy Laws: rather, thanks to recent reforms, the State Department must affirmatively and regularly supply the recipient government with a list of Leahy-banned units and receive assurances that the government will comply with the prohibition. But former U.S. officials tell us that those units, too, are not required to appear on the overall Leahy public disclosure list, although they must be disclosed to Congress.

To be clear, the Leahy Laws are stricter than some other human rights-focused accountability measures contained in U.S. law. Human Rights First has also called for greater transparency in the State Department’s use of visa restriction tools like the Section 7031(c) program, for example, which focuses on keeping kleptocrats and human rights violators out of the United States. Unlike the 7031(c) program, under which the public naming of those targeted is optional, the Leahy Law generally mandates it – yet even this stronger requirement for transparency has yielded too little clarity.

The limited transparency in the Leahy Law’s implementation has real downsides, given how important public scrutiny can be in pressuring partner governments for accountability, and in revealing U.S. inaction on politically sensitive cases.

In 2024, for instance, public reporting spurred the State Department after several months to finally act on recommendations that five Israeli military units be subject to a Leahy ban – though the eventual decision in those cases was to find that all the violators had been sufficiently held to account, and the units were therefore eligible for assistance, prompting sharp criticism. A recent Government Accountability Office report provided transparency for the first time on how Leahy vetting is being handled for the four major partners noted earlier – and apparently confirmed that, as of February 2025, no Israeli unit has ever been barred under the Leahy Laws. Eleven units have been barred in Ukraine, nine in Jordan, and a shockingly low three in Egypt.

Doubts about the rigor of Leahy implementation are not unique to these partners. In other cases, too, credible allegations of abuse have appeared not to lead to the expected consequences. For example, despite documented cases of extrajudicial killings by a Salvadoran police unit in 2017, U.S. assistance reportedly continued until the unit was disbanded in 2018. Several of its officers were then reassigned to a new unit, which later also received U.S. support. In 2019, a unit of the Armed Forces of the Philippines reportedly received U.S. security assistance, despite a 2015 fact-finding mission documenting its involvement in multiple incidents of GVHRs against indigenous communities.

The Defense Department’s Leahy Law results are even more opaque. Even though the State Department conducts Leahy vetting for it, the Defense Department faces no public reporting requirement at all on the results of that vetting, including any ineligible units identified, leaving a major share of U.S. assistance entirely outside public view. Both Departments must submit annual reports to Congress identifying the number of Leahy cases vetted, the results, including remediated units, but these reports are not publicly available, and it is unclear what level of detail they provide. Even this limited reporting mandate for the Pentagon will sunset in 2025 unless Congress renews it.

There are several steps that Congress and the U.S. government should take to ensure that the Leahy Laws better achieve their aim of ensuring that U.S. security assistance is a force for good.

First, Congress should require both the State and Defense Departments to publicly post annual statistics on how they are applying the law – including how many units were reviewed, rejected, or suspended, and in how many cases the national security exception to prevent disclosure was exercised. This would offer the public a baseline understanding of how the program is working.

Second, Congress should mandate that the State Department release its public list of barred units on a fixed, predictable timeline, and publish the names of ineligible units in the four countries that receive untraceable assistance.

Third, when the State Department publicly discloses a banned unit, it should also disclose the reasons why the unit was rejected and thus how it could again become eligible for assistance. This would better serve the ultimate goal of the Leahy Laws, which is not to provide an ever-growing list of units that are off limits, but rather to provide clear pathways and incentives for accountability.

Finally, Congress should enact a disclosure requirement for the Defense Department’s Leahy Law, one that matches the State Department’s public reporting obligations.

Former Senator Patrick Leahy recently described his namesake law as a “vital tool to remind foreign officials – and our own – that American taxpayers do not want to fund human rights violations.” But that safeguard is only likely to work if its implementation is more visible and accountable to the public.

 Thanks to our intern Bent Henke for his assistance assembling the Leahy Laws tracker.