Five Defining Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
In the previous year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a Trump presidency sequel. Hardly anyone anticipated. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders originating in the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. The tactic proved effective – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to fill the gap left by a major funding freeze. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the primary force, complemented by vigorous campaigning by deeply conservative factions using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
The anti-rights movement refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They pursue this agenda via lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five instances that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is suspended, causing global disruption, a senior US official states that a vast majority of the institution's work will be scrapped. Career diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists criticize the move, warning that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in regions of instability. 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 a far greater catastrophe looming. 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.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. 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 changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a major forum to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent countless females from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
