Five Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
Twelve months prior, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The sheer number and rapid pace of White House mandates issued from the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, supported by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that strive to weaken advances on numerous fronts. This covers access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We analyze five junctures that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of women and girls.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration states that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, predicting that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the gender equality forum with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a report shows 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 cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among rights advocates. In early May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In June, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent 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 politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” 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 be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.