Five Key Moments in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in This Past Year.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a Trump presidency sequel. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The flood and velocity of presidential directives originating in the White House were interpreted as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as networks struggled to address the shortfall left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this was only the precursor.
The US administration has been the key driver, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by far-right organisations capitalizing on the climate to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that strive to weaken progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We look at five episodes that shaped the security, respect, and well-being of females globally.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In the month of March, shortly after a key American development organization is halted, causing international chaos, a senior US official confirms that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts criticize the move, cautioning that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. 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 March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny 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 “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities will not allow usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, 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 ban was reimposed in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in October, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
