Five Significant Developments in the Erosion of the Rights of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
In the previous year, groups dedicated to gender equality were anticipating a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of White House mandates coming out of the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Trump administration has been the key driver, bolstered by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations using the moment to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We look at five instances that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, shortly after a key American development organization is frozen, causing global disruption, a senior US official confirms that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, predicting that mortality will increase. Activists say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several conservative religious groups 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 oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they welcome shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus 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 traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among rights advocates. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In June, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa 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 warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as local authorities refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
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 commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.
