Five Major Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in This Past Year.

This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of White House mandates coming out of the White House were interpreted as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as agencies hastened to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.

The American government has been the main instigator, aided by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with ideological partners.

This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that work to dismantle forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.

They accomplish their goals by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We review five junctures that influenced the security, respect, and well-being of the female population.

The Dismantling of USAID

In March, shortly after a key American development organization is suspended, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat states that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, stating that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference

In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.

African ‘Family Values’ Conferences

Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.

US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent 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 exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as local authorities will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.

Broader Restrictions on Aid

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. 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 national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.