Five Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a Trump presidency sequel. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of administrative decrees originating in the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as agencies hastened to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The Trump administration has been the primary force, supported by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups using the moment to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights describes a worldwide alliance of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We examine five junctures that impacted the security, respect, and well-being of females globally.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is suspended, causing international chaos, a senior US official announces that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts condemn the news, predicting that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization 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 the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held alongside the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on conservative ethics is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” 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 pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected 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 governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
