Five Critical Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were bracing themselves for a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But the situation was about to worsen.
The US administration has been the central catalyst, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by far-right organisations using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve 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 promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five junctures that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is halted, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat confirms that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, past leaders and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, cautioning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders 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. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, 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 a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they celebrate new Washington directives 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 resurgent, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding established norms on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among rights advocates. In early May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network 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 exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for 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 sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the broader enforcement are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
