A Quintet of Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
A year ago, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a Trump presidency sequel. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of White House mandates originating in the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as agencies hastened to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the key driver, complemented by fervent lobbying efforts by religious fundamentalist networks exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They achieve this through influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five junctures that shaped the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing global disruption, a senior US official announces that the lion's share of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, past leaders and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, cautioning that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Additional key contributing countries 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 the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods 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 UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In June, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
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 millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny countless females from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group 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 are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
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 policy was restored 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 expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
