Five Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were preparing for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders originating in the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The American government has been the main instigator, complemented by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We analyze five episodes that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat confirms that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, cautioning that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency 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 the impact on girls and women will be severe by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another continental gathering on conservative ethics is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In June, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, 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 policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, 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 encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.