Five Defining Significant Developments in the Rollback of the Rights of Females in the Year 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. Few were prepared for. The volume and speed of executive orders coming out of the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. The tactic proved effective – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as networks struggled to address the shortfall left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But the situation was about to worsen.
The American government has been the main instigator, supported by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They do this by pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We analyze five moments that influenced the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In early spring, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration confirms that a vast majority of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, stating that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, 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 diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. 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 gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they welcome shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are actively undermining historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among human rights defenders. In May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. 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 the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, 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 reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. 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 cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
