A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
A year ago, organisations advocating for women's rights were bracing themselves for a Trump presidency sequel. Scarcely anyone expected. The torrent and swiftness of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were interpreted as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as agencies hastened to address the shortfall left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Trump administration has been the main instigator, bolstered by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions capitalizing on the climate to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
The anti-rights movement denotes an international coalition of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that work to dismantle advances on numerous fronts. This covers reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We examine five moments that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
USAID Dismantled
In March, a month and a half following a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing turmoil around the world, a leading figure in the administration announces that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, stating that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with many more millions at risk. Additional key contributing countries follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns 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 soon after, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent 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 politically-motivated move “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as local authorities are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored 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 expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
