Date: 03-04-2025Time: 09.00-16.00Location: Ingensteds, Brenneriveien 9, 0182 Oslo
FOKUS - Forum for Women and Development Issues, with support from UNESCO, organizes a conference in Oslo on the rise of the ‘anti-rights’ and 'anti-gender' movement as a threat to women’s rights, gender equality, democracy, and the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals. The conference will be an arena for developing counterstrategies for civil society actors across borders.
Background
The world has seen significant progress for women's rights and gender equality in recent decades. In many countries, powerful actors and networks are mobilizing to reverse this development. The 'anti-rights' movement is becoming increasingly professionalized and innovative, has financial strength and uses UN arenas and the sustainability discourse to advance its agenda and silence opponents. False information is spread through think tanks and research institutions, bringing together conservative forces and authoritarian regimes to promote their ideology. The rights to safe abortion and sexuality education are among key issues that are under heavy attack in many countries, threatening not only women’s sexual and reproductive rights, but also the general right to health. The movement has gained new momentum with the election of Trump as president of the United States, and the Republican majority in both the Senate and Congress.
In the global south, alliances and network are mobilised to oppress women and LGBT+ people. A link between ‘anti-rights’ language and opposition to democratic development and peace has been observed, as in Russia’s propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine, in opposition to the peace agreement in Colombia, and in opposition to measures to limit climate change.
"The inter-linkages in organisations pushing against gender equality and SRHR and those focused on climate change denialism and ‘anti-vaccination’, are now better understood as part of larger wider movements designed to threaten democratic governance, human rights and multilateralism.” (Malayah Harper, RFSU, 2024).
The influence of the ‘anti-rights’ and ‘anti-gender’ movement thus represents a threat to the sustainability agenda.
FOKUS is an umbrella organization for the Norwegian women’s movement and collaborates with women’s organizations in Latin America and Africa. Our partners encounter this resistance in their daily work. The reactionary forces are well-organized and transnational, which requires civil society actors to come together and discuss counterstrategies.
Objectives
The conference will gather experiences in confronting the organized ‘anti-rights’ movement both at the country level and in multilateral contexts and bring to the fore strategies for meeting this challenge.
The project has two objectives:
- to create awareness and spread knowledge about what the ‘anti-gender’ and ‘anti-rights’ movement is and how it operates in different contexts,
- and to create an arena for counter-forces to discuss strategy and response.
The conference seeks to answer the following overarching questions:
- What threat does ‘anti-rights’ agenda pose to peace, democratic development and security?
- How can civil society actors be equipped, both organizationally and financially, to resist, locally, nationally, and in the UN system?
Among the confirmed speakers are:
- Andrea Peto (Central European University, Vienna)
- Malayah Harper (independent expert, previously working with the World Bank, WHO, YWCA, UNAIDS)
- Haley Mcewen (University of Gothenburg and University of the Witwatersrand)
- Joy Asasira (lawyer/consultant, Kampala)
- Anne-Floor Dekker (WO=MEN Dutch Gender Platform)
Registration is obligatory, only pre-registered persons will be allowed to participate.
Please register here.
