A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Assault on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
In the previous year, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of executive orders emanating from the White House were seen as a calculated strategy to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as agencies hastened to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, aided by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We examine five episodes that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of girls and women.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, shortly after a major US aid agency is suspended, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration announces that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, past leaders and aid and medical specialists criticize the move, cautioning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In June, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, 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 anticipated when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
