A Quintet of Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.

Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of White House mandates emanating from the White House were regarded as a calculated strategy to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.

The American government has been the main instigator, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.

This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This covers abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.

They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We examine five instances that affected the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.

The Demise of a Major Aid Agency

In early spring, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official confirms that nearly all of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, former presidents and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, cautioning that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.

Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference

In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in high spirits as they celebrate shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.

Summits Promoting Conservative Norms

Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In June, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.

US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives

As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent countless females from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group 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 at a standstill as local authorities refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.

Broader Restrictions on Aid

Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise 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 broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on 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 new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.