Five Crucial Incidents in the Erosion of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of executive orders originating in the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this was only the precursor.
The Trump administration has been the key driver, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We examine five instances that influenced the security, respect, and well-being of girls and women.
USAID Dismantled
In March, six weeks after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing widespread distress, a senior US official announces that the lion's share of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, stating that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders follow with their own cuts. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held in parallel with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome 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 toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In early May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In June, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. 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 refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. 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 include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.