A Quintet of Pivotal Events in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The flood and velocity of executive orders originating in the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, aided by fervent lobbying efforts by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with political allies.
This opposition to progressive rights describes a worldwide alliance of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that work to dismantle progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This covers access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They accomplish their goals by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five instances that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In early spring, shortly after a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration states that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. American foreign service officers, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, stating that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, 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 diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent countless females from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
