Understanding how anti-gender actors impact negotiations, the adoption and implementation of treaties, alliance building, and polarisation within multilateral structures is crucial – not only to counter anti-gender actors but also to preserve and improve our multilateral order, which is vital for human rights across the world, in particular of persons subject to (intersecting) forms of discrimination and marginalisation. The core output of this research project scheduled for publication in October 2022, financially supported by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, will be a comprehensive study analysing the impact of anti-gender actors on multilateral structures in Europe and providing concrete recommendations for policymakers, both in governments and international organisations.

Working further to defend and concretely advance the rights of women and LGBTQI* people in the European Union, our current project, financially supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, works on strengthening civil society capacities through enabling cross-sectoral cooperation, peer learning, strategy and narrative development, as well as in-depth advocacy between civil society and policymakers/political influence holders at both the EU level and in 6 European regions.

Across the world, there is an active civil society as well as progressive governments that campaign for the rights of women, those of the LGBTQI* community, against racism, as well as right-wing and nationalist populism. Unfortunately, these actors are far from being as well connected and funded as the anti-gender movements. The CFFP project, “United for our Rights”, financially supported by the German Federal Foreign Office worked to fill this gap. The project piloted an interdisciplinary and international hub which acted as a contact point for the various campaigns, research projects, and political initiatives that are working to counter the anti-gender campaigns in Europe and initiated concrete joint activities aimed at grounding the joint efforts to counter the anti-gender campaigns in the wider struggle against anti-democratic tendencies in Europe. Among other activities, we organised an interdisciplinary summer institute for civil society and governmental actors on recognising and countering anti-gender narratives and strategies.

In early 2020, CFFP began engaging with the question of the transnational anti-gender movement. Financially supported by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, CFFP conducted extensive desk research, interviews with activists and academics, and expert roundtables in order to develop a broad understanding on what we are dealing with and what we can do to counter the anti-gender campaigns. The result of this work, the study  “Power over Rights: Understanding and Countering the Transnational Anti-gender Movement” is the first comprehensive analysis of the anti-gender movement from a foreign policy perspective.