Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
In the previous year, feminist advocacy groups were anticipating a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of executive orders emanating from the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.
The American government has been the main instigator, supported by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with ideological partners.
The anti-rights movement signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses 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 look at five episodes that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing international chaos, a senior US official states that a vast majority of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, stating that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred 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 leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held in parallel with 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 high spirits as they applaud shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights 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 themed around the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, 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.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, 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 “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials will not allow the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated 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 include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement 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 negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the expanded global gag.
