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This week, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin expressing their concern that the Department of Defense (DoD) is providing assistance for human rights abusers and coup governments to participate in U.S. military exercises, while ignoring the requirements of U.S. statute – the “Leahy Law” – to ensure military forces receiving such assistance are not themselves human rights abusers, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reported on Friday.

Every year, DoD conducts joint military training exercises with foreign government military forces, and frequently provides funding support to those countries to defray the expenses of attending these military exercises. Many of these countries are subject to coup-related assistance restrictions or are gross human rights violators, such as Myanmar, Azerbaijan, and Sudan. DoD does not consider such training exercises, or support to defray expenses of attendance, to be “assistance” under the Leahy Law, when both clearly are U.S. assistance.

In response to Chair Cardin and Senator Warren’s inquires and engagement, DoD has suspended training exercises with a group of select countries flagged by the Senators, but concerns remain regarding the use of taxpayer funds on other countries sanctioned for coups and human rights violations. Accordingly, Chair Cardin and Senator Warren are calling on DoD to subject statutory Leahy vetting to foreign security force units receiving assistance pursuant to Section 321.

“The Leahy Law is clear: if the United States provides assistance to foreign countries, recipient military units must be scrutinized for human rights abuses before receiving such assistance,” said Chair Cardin. “I am concerned that not only has the Department of Defense invited countries sanctioned for coups against their elected governments and nations with abysmal human rights records, but has also provided U.S. taxpayer dollars and support for them to attend – all without Leahy vetting. The Leahy Laws exist for a reason; to ensure that U.S. military assistance does not enable or reward human rights abusers. DoD cannot disregard or dismiss this responsibility.”

“Training operations shouldn’t be used as a backdoor to prop up militaries who wouldn’t pass our human rights vetting,” said Senator Warren. “It violates the law and our values to fund and support countries with egregious human rights records.”