Five Major Key Moments in the Attack on the Rights of Females in This Past Year.
Twelve months prior, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were viewed as a calculated strategy to induce a state of shock. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The American government has been the main instigator, supported by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We examine five episodes that shaped the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a key American development organization is suspended, causing international chaos, a top American diplomat states that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities decry the decision, warning that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Additional key contributing countries follow with their own cuts. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among rights advocates. In early May, a president and first lady open a major forum to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities will not allow usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, 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 policy was restored 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 extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
