WRC Statement on “Trump’s War on Women,” New Report from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen

In Yemen, a young mother named Fatima died on the way to a hospital 90 minutes from home. The hospital near her had lost its US funding and could no longer handle obstetric emergencies. She left behind two daughters.

Her story is one of many. A new report from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, which includes research and analysis from the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), documents the Trump administration’s erasure of US support for women and girls. The report shows how the administration has diminished, disempowered, and disadvantaged women and girls around the world and undercut women’s leadership here at home.

 

The report finds:

• Protections for women in war zones are being stripped away. The US is actively working to weaken Women, Peace and Security language in the renewal of UN missions in conflict settings, rolling back essential protections for women and girls where they are most at risk.
• Aid cuts landed hardest on women and girls. The US canceled 88 percent of maternal and child health funding, 94 percent of sexual and reproductive health funding, and nearly 80 percent of funding to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. Hundreds of clinics have closed, and women have died in childbirth as a result.
• More than three million women and girls lost their lifeline against violence. Safe spaces, counseling, medical care, and legal help disappeared in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Sudan, and Ukraine.
• Girls are being pushed out of school and toward child marriage. Nearly 80 percent of US humanitarian education funding was cut. In one refugee settlement in Uganda, girls went from half of all students to about a quarter within months.

 

Women and girls in refugee camps and crisis zones are bearing the brunt of these decisions.

 

Read the full report here. WRC’s relevant research on the aid cuts’ impact on women and girls is below.

 

WRC’s supporting research:

• A Year of Harms: The most comprehensive evidence to date on how US aid cuts cost women and girls in humanitarian crises their health care, safety, education, and in some cases, their lives. Including specific findings on how women and girls are less safe from violence.
• A Cut Too Deep: How US aid withdrawals collapsed protection for women and girls in Honduras, gutting the national shelter system and forcing more than 21 organizations to cut or end services for survivors of violence.
• We Have Abandoned Them: How aid cuts and renewed violence have healthcare, disrupted education, and entrenched cycles of poverty.
• Unfunded and Unsafe: How US Aid cuts are threatening Gender-Based Violence prevention and response in humanitarian crises.
• At What Cost? (with Refugees International): Women-led organizations in six crises are surviving on unpaid labor and personal sacrifice as the cuts erode decades of progress on women’s rights.
• Apart From This, We Have No Other Place: In the world’s largest refugee settlement, cuts are hollowing out the safe spaces Rohingya women and girls call their “place of peace,” just as violence against them rises.