Five Defining Landmark Occurrences in the Erosion of the Rights of Females in This Past Year.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of executive orders issued from the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, bolstered by relentless activism by far-right organisations exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with political allies.
The anti-rights movement denotes an international coalition of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that aim to roll back gains in a variety of areas. These include 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 foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We examine five episodes that affected the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, shortly after a major US aid agency is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat states that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, warning that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a prominent church hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive 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 forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the ban was reimposed in January. 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 governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the expanded global gag.
