Five Significant Developments in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.
In the previous year, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of administrative decrees originating in the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, bolstered by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with ideological partners.
Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This covers 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 examine five junctures that influenced the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.
The Dismantling of USAID
In the month of March, shortly after a key American development organization is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a leading figure in the administration reveals that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in war zones. 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 many more millions at risk. 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 gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in buoyant mood as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among human rights defenders. In early May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has expanded considerably.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from access to birth control, 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 prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which prohibits Washington's support 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 ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
