Five Major Key Moments in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.
In the previous year, feminist advocacy groups were anticipating a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The torrent and swiftness of White House mandates coming out of the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
Often termed the anti-gender movement describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We examine five moments that influenced the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is its funds are blocked, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat states that nearly all of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. American foreign service officers, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, predicting that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by shrinking assistance, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted 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 head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held alongside 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 optimistic frame of mind as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In June, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
