Five Critical Landmark Occurrences in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The US administration has been the main instigator, aided by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that work to dismantle forward movement on multiple topics. These include access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five moments that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, shortly after a key American development organization is frozen, causing global disruption, a senior US official announces that over eighty percent of the institution's work will be scrapped. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, warning that mortality will increase. Activists say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred 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 leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
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 alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind 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 poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among rights advocates. In May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in January. 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 governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
