A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Erosion of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
Twelve months prior, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were interpreted as a premeditated approach to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as networks struggled to address the shortfall left by a sudden aid suspension. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, bolstered by vigorous campaigning by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They accomplish their goals by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five moments that impacted the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is halted, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration announces that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, cautioning that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In June, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, 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 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 incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive countless females from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. 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 refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise 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 expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
