Five Crucial Incidents in the Assault on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.

This time last year, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The volume and speed of presidential directives originating in the White House were interpreted as a premeditated approach to induce a state of shock. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as agencies hastened to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But this merely marked the opening act.

The American government has been the main instigator, bolstered by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.

The anti-rights movement signifies a transnational grouping of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. These include access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.

They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We analyze five junctures that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.

USAID Effectively Dismantled

In March, six weeks after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing international chaos, a senior US official states that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, warning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.

Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit

In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.

Summits Promoting Conservative Norms

Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.

American Plan to Burn Birth Control

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls 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 calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, 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

Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.