In an Era of Backlash, It’s Time to Recapture the Narrative

On November 1–7, I joined more than 5,000 advocates, policymakers, researchers, youth leaders, and health workers at the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Bogotá, Colombia. We were united in our commitment to advancing sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice (SRHRJ). The week offered sharp insight and sobering clarity, revealing both the power of our collective efforts and the rapidly escalating forces seeking to undermine them. 

As we enter the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, with its call to end digital violence against women and girls in all their diversity, one thing is unmistakable: narrative is the contested terrain on which protection and harm are being negotiated. The stories societies choose to uphold, and the coordinated disinformation campaigns to distort them, determine whose dignity, autonomy, and safety are protected, and whose are denied.  

Digital violence escalates when hostile narratives are left unchallenged. ICFP underscored what many of us are coming to realize: that a proactive, values-driven narrative is a form of prevention. It strengthens the environment in which women, girls, LGBTQI+ people, and other marginalized communities can safely raise their voices, whether online or in the public square. 

Anti-Rights Actors Are No Longer Just Dismantling Systems—They’re Building New Ones 

The sessions on anti-rights and anti-gender backlash painted a stark picture. What we’re facing is not a series of isolated attacks. It is a sophisticated, coordinated, and well-resourced ecosystem spanning continents. 

Organizations, like the deceptively named Institute for Women’s Health, the implementation arm of the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), are embedding anti-gender ideology into health systems down to the community-health-worker level. Pilots in Guatemala, for example, show how these actors are moving beyond rhetoric into systemic action. 

There is also growing momentum across Africa. Countries like Uganda have created ministerial task forces to advance GCD priorities. Regional convenings, including the Inter-Parliamentary Conference with Family Watch International and the Pan-African Conference on Family Values, serve as coordination spaces for an expanding anti-rights agenda. 

Simultaneously, shifts in U.S. foreign assistance, such as the expanded Global Gag Rule, a reframed “America First” Global Health Strategy, and new global health compacts developed without civil society input, reinforce an ideological framework that positions “God’s law above human rights.” This is the core logic driving GCD architecture. 

Perhaps the most sobering insight came from Neil Datta of the European Parliamentary Forum: anti-gender movements are in the ‘creation phase’ of a long-term strategy. Their approach includes advancing parallel health and social-service interventions. They have natural family planning programs instead of contraception, crisis pregnancy centers instead of evidence-based care, chastity-based curricula instead of comprehensive sexuality education, and even “reintegrative therapy” (a pseudonym for conversion therapy) targeting LGBTQI+ people. 

These services appear legitimate, but they are intended to replace rights-based public health infrastructure. And they are deeply intertwined with digital misinformation and online harassment campaigns targeting SRHR providers, youth activists, and LGBTQI+ communities.  

Digital violence is not a byproduct of this strategy—it is one of its instruments. 

Pronatalism Is Filling the Void Left by Our Silence on Demographics 

ICFP’s sessions on the resurgence of pronatalism highlighted why demographic discourse has become fertile ground for anti-rights narratives. 

Today’s pronatalist wave—from Hungary to parts of Latin America, Eastern Europe, and even the United States—is fueled by demographic panic, distorted claims of population “collapse,” and ethno-nationalist tropes of cultural or civilizational decline. Financial incentives and coercive rhetoric often sit side by side, framing women primarily as instruments of cultural and economic survival. 

Datta noted that after ICPD, many progressive actors stepped back from demographic conversations, eschewing the implied eugenics of focusing on population “control.” This retreat inadvertently created a vacuum that the far right has eagerly filled. Pronatalist narratives now function as powerful entry points for anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and anti-LGBTQI+ policies being pedaled around the globe. 

Yet the evidence is unequivocal: countries with the most sustainable fertility patterns are those that invest in gender equality, care systems, and robust SRHR, not those that limit human rights. 

Reclaiming demographic narratives is essential. When women’s bodies are instrumentalized for national goals, violations of autonomy—online and offline—become easier to justify. 

Communication Is Not a ‘Nice to Have.’ It Is Critical Infrastructure for Safeguarding Rights 

One cross-cutting lesson from ICFP was that having a communication strategy is not peripheral to this fight. It is a core infrastructure. 

Anti-rights movements have mastered the fusion of identity, belonging, and moral storytelling. SRHR organizations, by contrast, often rely on technical language and data-heavy messaging that resonates largely only within our own circles. 

Panelists across the conference reinforced the need for a different approach: 

• Research from Ireland shows that values-based messaging that foregrounded care, compassion, and privacy moved the “movable middle” far more than rights-framed language. 

• Successes in Poland demonstrated the political power of mobilizing young women voters around autonomy and dignity. 

• Youth movements across Latin America emphasized intersectionality and the need for digital organizing spaces that protect young people from online harassment and coordinated disinformation. 

What This Moment Demands 

The voices at ICFP made it clear: we are in a battle over the systems, norms, and narratives that shape our lives, our safety, and our rights. 

For ICRW, our peer organizations and allies, the path forward includes: 

• Building proactive, evidence-informed counter-narratives that not only refute misinformation but articulate the world we stand for. 

• Centering belonging and shared values in our communications to expand who sees themselves in the SRHR movement. 

• Strengthening demographic literacy to counter pronatalist distortions. 

• Supporting youth-led, feminist digital infrastructure, recognizing that digital harm is used to suppress rights-based movements. 

• Investing in cross-regional coalitions to match the speed and scale of anti-rights coordination. 

Protecting women, girls, LGBTQIA+, gender-diverse, and intersex people from digital violence takes more than moderating online spaces. It requires challenging the political projects that fuel the harm—and telling a different story about autonomy, dignity, and the right to thrive.