The health and wellbeing of women, girls, and the LGBTQI+ community is under threat from a globally coordinated and well-funded attack on their rights.
Progress and pushback
The global discourse on the rights of women and girls to make choices about their own bodies –including deciding when to have children and the right to access high-quality reproductive health services without facing violence – has seen both progress and pushback.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been at the forefront in advocating for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) policies.
However, historical and more recent pushbacks have posed stark challenges. The implications for multilateralism and women's and girl’s rights are profound.
Progress denied
The sexual reproductive health rights agenda has long been contentious within WHO and other UN institutional processes.
For example, in a potentially watershed moment, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo established a global consensus on SRHR. However, the implementation of these agreements has faced strong resistance from conservative factions and certain Member States, which argue that SRHR policies undermine traditional values and even promote moral decay.
In recent years, this pushback has intensified. The rise of populist and conservative governments has emboldened opposition to SRHR initiatives.
For instance, at the 2019 United Nations General Assembly, several countries, including the USA, Poland and Brazil, questioned what they perceived as the “promotion of abortion” and “radical gender ideologies” under the guise of SRHR. This resistance has disrupted progress towards achieving universal access to SRHR information and services.
The gender pushback on the world stage
Within the WHO Member State-led Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) – set up to draft and negotiate the Pandemic Accord to ensure that the world will be better prepared to prevent and respond to future pandemics – the pushback on gender has severely hampered the consensus-building process.
These delays undermine international health security and preparedness. They don’t just threaten the timely adoption of the Pandemic Accord. They also diminish global capacity to respond effectively to pandemics, such as the recent Mpox outbreak.
It is critical that any international health agreement is gender-sensitive, considering gender inequalities and the right of all people to have access to their freedoms and the services and support that they need. However, during recent INB sessions, debates over the inclusion of gender-sensitive language in the draft of the Pandemic Accord have intensified. Several Member States have argued that such language undermines their national values and cultural norms. This opposition has led to protracted negotiations and, at times, outright stalemates in discussions.
Root causes
In recent decades, cross-border anti-gender movements, involving religious groups, civil society actors, political parties and governments, have grown stronger. They oppose ‘gender ideology’, which they claim undermines traditional family structures and values.
These movements portray women and children as victims needing protection. They use this narrative to weaponise women’s and children’s rights to advance their own agendas and create division. This tactic has ultimately harmed the very groups they claim to defend, exploiting societal care and concern for families to pit people against one another, at the expense of the rights of women, children and LGBTQI+ people.
With apparent access to significant resources, anti-gender groups have manipulated discussions on decolonisation and national sovereignty, framing feminism and LGBTQI+ rights as cultural attacks and Western impositions. Globally, they've pushed to end comprehensive sexuality education, enacted harsh anti- LGBTQI+ laws, restricted bodily autonomy, and made advocacy for SRHR restrictive or illegal in certain contexts. At the UN, opposition has become systematic across sessions at the Committee on the Status of Women, the WHO and the Human Rights Council.
Multilateralism under threat
At a time when international cooperation to address global health issues has never been more important, the pushback against SRHR is having serious consequences for the multilateral system.
Consensus-building efforts, which are crucial for the functioning of international organisations like the WHO, are being undermined. Polarisation on SRHR issues has led to fractured and delayed negotiations, leaving the WHO to appear ineffective and risking undermining its credibility at a time when multilateral cooperation on global issues has never been more important.
The gender pushback also erodes trust and cooperation among Member States. Countries that support comprehensive SRHR policies find themselves at odds with those opposing them, leading to strained diplomatic relations.
The attack on rights
Decades of progress on maternal and adolescent healthcare, HIV prevention and care, marriage and family planning rights, safety from sexual violence, and the freedom to express gender identity and sexual orientation are under threat from anti-gender movements.
Anti-gender advocates are using international platforms to hinder the activism of women, children and LGBTQI+ people. They aim to restrict the participation of women, children and LGBTQI+ people in decision-making processes and prevent their viewpoints from being integrated into discussions on issues that impact their lives.
Fight back
Governments and civil society organisations must defend sexual reproductive health rights in multilateral spaces. Here are three ways to do it:
1. Learn from anti-gender movements: Champions for SRHR need to match and exceed the level of coordination and funding that anti-gender movements are attacking them with. We must build broader coalitions at the community, national, regional and global levels and work together to mount a more strategic defence of these hard-won rights.
2. “Nothing about us without us”: Counter claims that dignity and equality are Western colonial ideas by supporting, and amplifying feminist, LGBTQI+, women’s & girls’ rights, and funding female-led organisations across the world.
3. Expose tactics and actions: Anti-gender movements manipulate and weaponise the language of rights, especially children’s rights, to oppose SRHR rights, despite them both being integral to universal human rights. SRHR champions need to expose these tactics, including those used in closed-room negotiations, to show the public the disastrous impact these tactics are having on all health rights and on the world’s ability to work together to stop the next pandemic.
The pushback against SRHR within the WHO, INB, and other UN agencies has profound implications for multilateralism and the rights of women, girls and LGBTQI+ people. It highlights the ongoing conflict between progressive and conservative elements in shaping global health policies. The positions of member states showcase the deep-rooted ideological rifts that continue to affect discussions on SRHR.
The rights of women, girls and LGBTQI+ people are being used as bargaining chips. This must stop.
As the international community grapples with these challenges, gender equality must be recognised as the cornerstone of SRHR initiatives.
That’s essential in safeguarding and promoting the rights of women, girls and LGBTQI+ people everywhere.
