Five Crucial Incidents in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
Twelve months prior, groups dedicated to gender equality were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of presidential directives originating in the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as agencies hastened to compensate for the loss left by a freeze on international development funds. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the central catalyst, aided by vigorous campaigning by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with political allies.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives 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 lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five episodes that impacted the protection, honor, and existence of girls and women.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is frozen, causing widespread distress, a senior US official announces that nearly all of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, warning that fatalities will ensue. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, 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 shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials are blocking 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 standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the ban was reimposed 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 cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
