Five Significant Developments in the Assault on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
In the previous year, organisations advocating for women's rights were preparing for a Trump presidency sequel. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The flood and velocity of executive orders emanating from the White House were seen as a calculated strategy to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to fill the gap left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the primary force, supported by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations capitalizing on the climate to solidify transnational relationships with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
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 episodes that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a senior US official confirms that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. Career diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in regions of instability. 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. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, 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 opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among rights advocates. In early May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
