“Dig Our Heels In”: Sida’s Civil Society Partners and The Backlash Against Sexual and Gender-Related Rights

Sammanfattning

Recent years have seen an increase in the number and organisational and financial strength of actors working to revoke the protection of sexual and gender-related rights. Activists, scholars, and practitioners alike have sounded the alarm about the efforts currently being made to dismantle respect for issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), gender equality, abortion, family planning and LGBTQI+2 rights. While many claim it to have begun among ultraconservatives among the religious (and radical) right in the US as well as in the Vatican, the ‘anti-rights’ or ‘anti-gender’ movement has now spread globally, establishing local branches and forging alliances in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. This includes regions and countries that Sweden, through its development cooperation, provides development finance and support to. The question here is how the backlash against SRHR and gender equality affects Sida’s civil society partners, and how do they overcome the challenges that the rise of the anti-rights movement presents?

This working paper tries to respond to these questions through five interviews with three of Sida’s CSO partners. For security reasons, the names of the (organisations and) informants (representing them) have been left out. The findings suggest that the CSOs’ experience of the backlash, at least partly, depends on the institutional level at which they operate. The informants report having their funding blocked by conservative governments; being targeted by anti-rights intimidations attempts; and having anti-rights actors infiltrate and disrupt their activities and events. At the level of the UN, the informants reported similar experiences, for example, that anti-rights actors (both traditional and previously considered ‘gender champions’) are calling for the defunding of important UN institutions; are infiltrating their UN events and are purposefully stalling or sabotaging important resolutions on gender equality, SRHR, and LGBTQI+ rights. At the local level, informants reported experiencing the backlash in terms of an increased level of physical and psychological violence; state and civilian attacks on LGBTQI+ visibility; and through the active role played by local religious leaders.