A Quintet of Landmark Occurrences in the Rollback of the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
Twelve months prior, feminist advocacy groups were anticipating a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees originating in the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as agencies hastened to compensate for the loss left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, supported by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to strengthen global ties with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. This covers access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They pursue this agenda via lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five moments that affected the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, a month and a half following a key American development organization is suspended, causing widespread distress, a leading figure in the administration announces that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. US diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, warning that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held alongside the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they applaud new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining historic agreements on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among rights advocates. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.
