A Quintet of Key Moments in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
In the previous year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of executive orders issued from the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to induce a state of shock. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to fill the gap left by a sudden aid suspension. But the situation was about to worsen.
The US administration has been the main instigator, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions capitalizing on the climate to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We review five moments that shaped the protection, honor, and existence of girls and women.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, shortly after a major US aid agency is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official announces that nearly all of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, cautioning that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization 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 upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. 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 LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. 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 dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. 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 host nation officials refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, 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 anticipated when the rule was reinstated 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 extend the restrictions to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the expanded global gag.
