🔗 Share this article A Quintet of Significant Developments in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Past Year. Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The sheer number and rapid pace of presidential directives emanating from the White House were interpreted as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen. The American government has been the central catalyst, bolstered by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments. This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education. They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs. We look at five junctures that shaped the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls. USAID Effectively Dismantled In the month of March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing international chaos, a senior US official announces that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, predicting that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda. Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies 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 world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world. Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among rights advocates. In May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has grown significantly. American Plan to Burn Birth Control As medical centers in numerous African countries 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 millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated. Broader Restrictions on Aid Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. 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 policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The sheer number and rapid pace of presidential directives emanating from the White House were interpreted as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen. The American government has been the central catalyst, bolstered by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments. This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education. They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs. We look at five junctures that shaped the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls. USAID Effectively Dismantled In the month of March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing international chaos, a senior US official announces that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, predicting that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda. Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies 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 world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world. Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among rights advocates. In May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has grown significantly. American Plan to Burn Birth Control As medical centers in numerous African countries 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 millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated. Broader Restrictions on Aid Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. 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 policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.