A Quintet of Landmark Occurrences in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.

This time last year, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of executive orders emanating from the White House were interpreted as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.

The American government has been the key driver, bolstered by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.

The anti-rights movement refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. This covers abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.

They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.

We analyze five junctures that shaped the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.

USAID Dismantled

In early spring, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing widespread distress, a leading figure in the administration states that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.

Summits Promoting Conservative Norms

Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among rights advocates. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution 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. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.

Contraceptive Destruction Order

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.

Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed 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 expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.