A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were steeling themselves against a Trump presidency sequel. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of White House mandates coming out of the White House were seen as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The American government has been the key driver, supported by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They accomplish their goals by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We analyze five instances that influenced the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
The Dismantling of USAID
In early spring, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing widespread distress, a leading figure in the administration states that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists criticize the move, cautioning that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among human rights defenders. In early May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In June, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
