Five Crucial Incidents in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The torrent and swiftness of executive orders coming out of the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to compensate for the loss left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this merely marked the opening act.
The US administration has been the key driver, complemented by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to forge international alliances with political allies.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses 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 impacted the safety, dignity and lives of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official confirms that the lion's share of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, stating 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 birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, reports confirm how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
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 alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they welcome new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from family planning options, 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 “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
