A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
In the previous year, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a second Trump term. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of administrative decrees coming out of the White House were viewed as a premeditated approach to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as agencies hastened to fill the gap left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Trump administration has been the primary force, aided by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. These include pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We examine five moments that shaped the welfare, autonomy, and survival of girls and women.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, a month and a half following a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a senior US official confirms that the lion's share of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, past leaders and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, warning that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with many more millions at risk. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among rights advocates. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In June, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
