Five Major Landmark Occurrences in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were seen as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The US administration has been the main instigator, complemented by fervent lobbying efforts by far-right organisations using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition 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. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We examine five instances that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat confirms that nearly all of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, warning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening established norms on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a major forum to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny countless females from family planning options, 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 international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire 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 refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of 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 October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
