Five Critical Key Moments in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.

This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to compensate for the loss left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this was only the precursor.

The American government has been the key driver, supported by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with political allies.

This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.

They accomplish their goals by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.

We review five episodes that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.

USAID Dismantled

In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing widespread distress, a senior US official confirms that the lion's share of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders 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. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm 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. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A leader of an international advocacy group says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit

In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held alongside the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.

African ‘Family Values’ Conferences

Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among human rights defenders. In early May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on family values 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 push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.

Contraceptive Destruction Order

As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive 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 forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government will not allow the destruction of viable medicines.

Broader Restrictions on Aid

Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to 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 policy was restored 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 expand the global gag rule to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.