Five Critical Key Moments in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in the Past Year.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The volume and speed of executive orders coming out of the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to cause confusion and fear. The tactic proved effective – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, aided by vigorous campaigning 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 government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that work to dismantle progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This covers access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We examine five instances that affected the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration states that nearly all of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, predicting that mortality will increase. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, statistics reveal 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. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held in parallel with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening historic agreements 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 focused on the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In early May, a president and first lady open a major forum to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
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 storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, 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 “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government will not allow 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 standard practice for 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 October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
