A Quintet of Key Moments in the Erosion of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.

A year ago, organisations advocating for women's rights were preparing for a Trump presidency sequel. Few were prepared for. The torrent and swiftness of White House mandates coming out of the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as agencies hastened to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.

The US administration has been the central catalyst, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions capitalizing on the climate to forge international alliances with political allies.

The movement against gender equality denotes an international coalition of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that strive to weaken 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 influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.

We review five episodes that shaped the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.

The Dismantling of USAID

In March, shortly after a major US aid agency is halted, causing widespread distress, a senior US official reveals that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, warning that lives will be lost. 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 birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A leader of an international advocacy group says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they applaud new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.

Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa

Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.

American Plan to Burn Birth Control

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 midsummer plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive countless females from family planning options, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “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 fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.

‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. 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. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.