Five Major Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.

A year ago, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of presidential directives emanating from the White House were interpreted as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.

The US administration has been the key driver, aided by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks using the moment to build worldwide connections 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 billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. These include pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.

They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.

We look at five episodes that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.

USAID Dismantled

In early spring, six weeks after a key American development organization is suspended, causing international chaos, a top American diplomat reveals that nearly all of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, predicting that lives will be lost. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in war zones. 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 a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference

In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.

Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa

Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.

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 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 destruction will deny countless females from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials 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 offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.