Five Critical Key Moments in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.

This time last year, women’s rights organisations were steeling themselves against a Trump presidency sequel. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The flood and velocity of presidential directives emanating from the White House were interpreted as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. The tactic proved effective – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to fill the gap left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.

The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, bolstered by vigorous campaigning by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.

The anti-rights movement denotes an international coalition of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals 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 do this by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We look at five episodes that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.

USAID Effectively Dismantled

In early spring, a month and a half following a key American development organization is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat announces that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, warning that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders follow with their own cuts. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering 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 buoyant mood as they applaud new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.

Summits Promoting Conservative Norms

Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.

American Plan to Burn Birth Control

As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities will not allow the destruction of viable medicines.

Broader Restrictions on Aid

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the ban was reimposed 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 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. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.