Five Critical Crucial Incidents in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were steeling themselves against a Trump presidency sequel. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of White House mandates emanating from the White House were viewed as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the primary force, bolstered by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with ideological partners.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We review five instances that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of girls and women.
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 top American diplomat states that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career 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 dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In early May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A few days later, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny countless females from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials will not allow usable products to be destroyed.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reviving the global gag rule, 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 came as no surprise 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 governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
