A Quintet of Landmark Occurrences in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in the Past Year.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a Trump presidency sequel. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to compensate for the loss left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.
The Trump administration has been the central catalyst, complemented by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with political allies.
The movement against gender equality denotes an international coalition of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that work to dismantle progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five instances that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is its funds are blocked, causing turmoil around the world, a leading figure in the administration reveals that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts condemn the news, cautioning that people will die as a result. 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 access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. 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 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 defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark 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 post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected 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 extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application 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 negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
