Five Defining Key Moments in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a Trump presidency sequel. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of executive orders coming out of the White House were seen as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, complemented by relentless activism by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses 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 promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We examine five episodes that influenced the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is frozen, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration announces that the lion's share of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, stating that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal 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. Two other major donor nations initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a move to appease a political ally.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are actively undermining established norms on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, 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 storage facility in Belgium. 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 exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. 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 rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. 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. More details on the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
