A Quintet of Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in This Past Year.
This time last year, groups dedicated to gender equality were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of White House mandates issued from the White House were viewed as a calculated strategy to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the primary force, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by religious fundamentalist networks exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.
The movement against gender equality denotes an international coalition of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses 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 moments that influenced the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a key American development organization is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official announces that the lion's share of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, predicting that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
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 in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In early May, a president and first lady open a major forum to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on conservative ethics is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the level of external participation 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 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 global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny 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 politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials 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 commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. 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. More details on the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
