A Quintet of Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a return of Donald Trump to office. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The torrent and swiftness of White House mandates emanating from the White House were seen as a calculated strategy to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as networks struggled to fill the gap left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, aided by vigorous campaigning by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with ideological partners.
The anti-rights movement signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. Areas targeted involve abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We review five instances that affected the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, shortly after a key American development organization is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a senior US official announces that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. American foreign service officers, past leaders and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, stating that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. 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 millions more to come. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. 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 Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held concurrently with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a major forum to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
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 midsummer plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive countless females from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. 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 refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
