Five Pivotal Events in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.

This time last year, groups dedicated to gender equality were bracing themselves for a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of White House mandates emanating from the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But this merely marked the opening act.

The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, supported by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to solidify transnational relationships with political allies.

The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.

They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We analyze five instances that shaped the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.

The Demise of a Major Aid Agency

In early spring, shortly after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing widespread distress, a senior US official announces that the lion's share of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, cautioning that mortality will increase. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held alongside the annual UN Women gathering. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are actively undermining established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.

Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa

Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused 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 overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.

US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives

As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive countless females from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. 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 perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.

Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy

Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.