Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Erosion of the Rights of Females in This Past Year.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders emanating from the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Trump administration has been the primary force, complemented by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights describes a worldwide alliance of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that work to dismantle gains in a variety of areas. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They do this by pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We analyze five instances that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration states that the lion's share of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, warning that people will die as a result. Activists say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held alongside the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they celebrate shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates 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 cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among rights advocates. In May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. 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 cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
