On the Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) podcast episode, “The Global Gag Rule Expanded: How Anti-Rights Ideology Is Governing U.S. Foreign Aid,” Dr. Elizabeth Sully, Director of International Research, and Amy Friedrich-Karnik, Director of Federal Policy, explain why the expanded global gag rule affects far more than SRHR groups and warn about the risk of over-compliance.
Guttmacher experts unpack the expanded global gag rule on Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) podcast
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Transcript:
Every other donor that is giving any aid, their aid dollars are now being conditioned by US ideology, and I think that should be of a concern to countries everywhere. It cannot be overstated how impactful and severe this new policy can be, right? It applies to international organizations, multilateral organizations, all of the funding within those organizations.
It's not just foreign NGOs that have to decide, are they gonna take the money? It's now UN agencies that have to decide what to do with this money. It is impossible to overstate the potential impact of what this is gonna look like. There are so many new entities that have to understand this policy. I mean, in SRHR, we've been contending with it on and off for the last several years. We understand it quite well.
These other organizations, entities, movements, have no idea what's about to hit them, and the learning curve is gonna be huge. There's a lot of risk and a lot of questions and unknowns about how this is gonna play out, and I would just urge entities to not over-comply, to think deeply about it and make those considerations.
I was thinking about what other countries can be doing right now, 'cause I think Amy's point about this applying to multilaterals and UN agencies—Every other donor that is giving any aid, their aid dollars are now being conditioned by US ideology, and I think that should be of a concern to countries everywhere.
So, it's either you've given money to the UN, you're giving money to an organization, and all of a sudden, what that organization can do, what that UN agency can do, is being dictated by the US, one single country in a system that is supposed to represent all countries. And that should, I think, be of grave concern, or when it applies bilaterally to countries.
So, there, I think Amy's point of, it does say, "We may ask countries to sign this." They're not saying they're gonna ask all of them, and so I think there is leverage there in countries to say, "We want a waiver. We don't want to sign," to be pushing back, because this is really the US exerting control over what the rest of the entire world can do, whether it's a donor giving money or a country receiving money, and there's power in numbers, there's power in pushback.
And I think it's just to, I think, Mina's point really, is, are countries willing to push back when it comes to women's bodies and people's rights and basic reproductive rights for all peoples? And that's, I think, the fundamental challenge of it all.