59 Months To 2030: Feminist Leaders Warn Global Backlash Threatens Gender Equality and Right To Health
With less than five years to the 2030 deadline, global progress on gender equality and the right to health is dangerously off-track, even as anti-rights pushbacks intensify across the world.
Speaking at the SHE & Rights January 2026 forum, feminist leaders warned that despite pockets of progress on SDG-3 (health) and SDG-5 (gender equality), gains remain fragile.
Shobha Shukla of Citizen News Service (CNS) noted that gender-based violence has barely declined since 2000, while female genital mutilation has risen by 15 per cent in the past eight years, despite global pledges to end the practice by 2030.
The 2026 political climate has deepened concerns. Participants decried the United States’ withdrawal from 66 international organisations, including 31 UN entities and the World Health Organisation, warning that the move has triggered funding shocks for gender-responsive health programmes worldwide.
Dr Mabel Bianco, founding president of FEIM in Argentina, said the pull-out undermines multilateralism and disrupts life-saving initiatives on malaria, HIV, TB and sexual and reproductive health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
The impact is already being felt in the Global South. Gender justice advocate Tushar Niroula warned that reduced support to UN agencies such as UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF and WHO could slow progress on maternal, adolescent and reproductive health in countries like Nepal, where recent gains were heavily supported by multilateral financing and technical assistance.
Leaders at the forum also linked gender injustice to deeper structural forces, including patriarchy, capitalism, militarisation and religious fundamentalism.
Paola Salwan Daher of Women Deliver described the current moment as a “crisis of multilateralism”, worsened by double standards in the application of international law, and called for a people-centred, feminist-led reimagining of global cooperation.
Participants stressed the urgency of collective action ahead of the Women Deliver Conference 2026, urging governments and civil society to move beyond “performative solidarity” and stand firmly with women, girls and gender-diverse communities facing coordinated anti-rights campaigns.
They also called for recognition of adolescent girls as leaders today, not merely leaders of tomorrow, and for stronger defence of bodily autonomy and LGBTQI+ rights.
As the clock ticks down to 2030, speakers agreed that feminist movements must intensify cross-border organising to protect hard-won gains and push back against rising far-right and anti-gender agendas that threaten to roll back decades of progress.
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