Banwell, Stacy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7395-2617 (2019) Gender, north-south relations: reviewing the global gag rule and the de-funding of UNFPA under president Trump. Third World Quarterly, 41 (1). pp. 1-19. ISSN 0143-6597 (Print), 1360-2241 (Online) (doi:10.1080/01436597.2019.1668266)

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Abstract

In 2017 American President, Donald Trump, reinstated the ‘Global Gag Rule’(GGR). This order bans new funding to NGOs that provide abortion as a method of family planning, lobby to make abortion laws less restrictive or, provide information, referrals or counselling on abortions. In the same year the Trump administration defunded The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The latter is reviewed against the backdrop of the conflict in Syria. These policies draw upon, and reproduce, normative representations of women as vulnerable, weak, passive and maternal. Focusing on women’s access to abortion following wartime rape, the meanings and implications of these policies are reviewed. Transnational and postcolonial feminist perspectives are used to unpack the core themes of this piece: gender, reproductive healthcare and foreign economic policy. Three main arguments are made: (1) US foreign policy on abortion under the Trump administration draws implicitly on conservative ideas about gender, sexuality and maternity (2), denying female survivors of rape access to abortion – which is discriminatory and violates key international instruments - is a form of structural violence that amounts to torture and (3), the GGR and the defunding of UNFPA reproduce structural inequalities between the Global North and the Global South.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	global gag rule, gender essentialism, postcolonial feminism, transnational feminism, safe abortion, united nations population fund
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > School of Law & Criminology (LAC)
Last Modified:	15 Apr 2021 01:38
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/25282

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