Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Rollback of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were seen as a intentional maneuver to induce a state of shock. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The US administration has been the key driver, aided by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions using the moment to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They do this by lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We analyze five episodes that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of females globally.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, a month and a half following a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat states that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, cautioning that mortality will increase. Rights defenders 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. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. 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 celebrate new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the extent of foreign involvement has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, 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 warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. 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 declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
