Five Critical Crucial Incidents in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of White House mandates coming out of the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But that was just the beginning.
The US administration has been the key driver, complemented by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to solidify transnational relationships with sympathetic regimes.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. Areas targeted involve pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They do this by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We examine five moments that impacted the security, respect, and well-being of girls and women.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is halted, causing widespread distress, a senior US official confirms that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, stating that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms 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, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network 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 March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they welcome new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is returning, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among rights advocates. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to push back against “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 pro-choice campaigners say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. 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 declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill 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 commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected 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 extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
