Five Critical Key Moments in the Attack on the Rights of Females in This Past Year.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The torrent and swiftness of presidential directives coming out of the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to compensate for the loss left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, complemented by vigorous campaigning by far-right organisations capitalizing on the climate to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.
The movement against gender equality describes a worldwide alliance of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We examine five episodes that influenced the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a key American development organization is suspended, causing international chaos, a senior US official confirms that nearly all of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, predicting that lives will be lost. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, 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 a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. 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 applaud shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
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 national leader and spouse open a major forum to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. 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 exhorts African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, 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 incineration will prevent a huge female population 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 “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
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 typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in October, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
