A Quintet of Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Females in This Past Year.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees coming out of the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. The tactic proved effective – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Trump administration has been the key driver, bolstered by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. These include pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We examine five junctures that shaped the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a major US aid agency is suspended, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat announces that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, past leaders and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, warning that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization 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 waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. 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.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. 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 LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among human rights defenders. In the start of 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 few days later, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates 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 health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls 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 forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored in January. 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 encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
