Five Defining Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.

In the previous year, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of executive orders issued from the White House were seen as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. The tactic proved effective – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.

The American government has been the main instigator, complemented by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations capitalizing on the climate to solidify transnational relationships with sympathetic regimes.

This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken advances on numerous fronts. Areas targeted involve abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.

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

We analyze five episodes that impacted the protection, honor, and existence of women and girls.

The Demise of a Major Aid Agency

In early spring, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is suspended, causing international chaos, a senior US official states that nearly all of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, stating that mortality will increase. Activists say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, 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 reduced funding, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held concurrently with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.

African ‘Family Values’ Conferences

Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among rights advocates. In May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. 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 a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.

US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.

‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded

Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support 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 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 broaden the scope of the policy to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.