Expanded Global Gag Rule: The Trump administration prioritises ideology over human life
- Through a package of three new policies, the Trump administration is pushing the Project 2025 playbook to its extremes, weaponising U.S. foreign aid to enforce an anti-rights ideological agenda worldwide
- From February 2026, U.S. funding will also be conditioned on silence around LGBTIacronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people. Although this is not the acronym available to describe people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics, it is the most commonly used in United Nations spaces and advocacy. More human rights or on carrying out DEI work
- The consequences will add to the devastation that a year of foreign aid cuts and continued attacks against genderrefers to a social construct which places cultural and social expectations on individuals based on their assigned sex. More equality, bodily autonomy, and diversity have already produced
Geneva, 27 January 2026 — The Trump administration’s expansion of the Global Gag Rule is a violent attack on everyone’s freedoms and bodies, masqueraded as care for women and children, ILGA World said today.
Through a package of three new policies, the Trump administration is pushing the Project 2025 playbook to its extremes, weaponising U.S. foreign aid to enforce an anti-rights ideological agenda worldwide.
Weaponising U.S. foreign aid
For the first time since it was first enacted in 1973, the Global Gag Rule will apply to all U.S. foreign aid recipients — including humanitarian and development aid, global health, civil society, and refugee support initiatives run by U.S.-based organisations, UN partners, and other governments.
To remain eligible for U.S. funding, the Trump administration is choosing to force organisations to halt not only abortion services, but also counselling, referrals, medical and contraception information, training, and any efforts to advance access to abortion through law or policy.
Global Gag Rule restrictions will reverberate far beyond abortion care or support to LGBTI people
And the reckless assault does not end with reproductive justice. From February 2026, U.S. funding will also be conditioned on silence around LGBTI people’s human rights — barring recipients from addressing gender identityrefers to a person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth. More, supporting legal gender recognitionlaws, administrative procedures or processes by which a person can change their sex/gender marker and names on official identity documents. More, or carrying out diversity, equity, and inclusion work.
These restrictions will reverberate far beyond abortion care or support to LGBTI people facing violence and discriminationunequal or unfair treatment which can be based on a range of grounds - such as age, ethnic background, disability, and diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions or sex characteristics, amongst others. More. The Trump administration is pushing organisations delivering HIV prevention, maternal health services, humanitarian aid, refugee support, education, and community-based programs — particularly those inclusive of LGBTI people — to censor their work, dismantle inclusive services, or walk away from entire communities — only to keep U.S. funding.
Everyone should have the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, lives, and futures: these are choices that belong to them alone.
But today, the Trump administration chose to assault those freedoms, asking countries and organisations to make the impossible choice between either continuing to help those in need or giving up the funding that allows them to operate.
When the next humanitarian crisis hits, and vital support services will have shut down in the meantime, will the world care more about the lives lost or the ideology that Trump is forcing on the world?
Kimberly Frost, co-Secretary General at ILGA World
Our solidarity across movements
ILGA World joins countless other feminist, sexual and reproductive health rights, and LGBTI activists and organisations in calling out these policies for what they are: a form of bullying individual countries’ governments into complying with anti-rights and extremist ideology.
The consequences will add to the devastation that a year of foreign aid cuts and continued attacks against gender equality, bodily autonomy, and diversity have already produced.
Foreign aid should allow saving more lives, not fewer. It should power support towards those who need it the most, not forcing aid workers to turn them away — especially when money is available and yet cruelly and deliberately withheld.
Today and every day, we remain in solidarity with those working to create a future where every person has the freedom to decide over their bodies and loves, has access to the care they need, and can exercise the rights that belong equally to each of us, as human beings.
Kimberly Frost, co-Secretary General at ILGA World
