by Gillian Kane, Ipas
“Project 2025, the [US] Heritage Foundation’s readiness work plan for a second Donald Trump presidency…. is more than 900 pages. Project 2025’s playbook, ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise’, is a door-stopper of policy recommendations that lays out detailed steps for decimating democracy in the first 180 days of the new administration. Some executive orders include eliminating the Department of Education (“a woke education cartel”), renaming the Department of Health and Human Services the “Department of Life,” and anchoring these commitments in the promise to restore “the family as the centerpiece of American life…. Even if Trump loses in November 2024, many core aspects of Project 2025 will still be implemented. In fact, some of its recommendations are already underway….”
This excellent article describes how Janet Museveni, the wife of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, is being courted to support the Heritage Foundation’s programme in the name of improving women’s health via a new organisation she founded, called the Institute for Women’s Health. In February this year, Valerie Huber, a US “abstinence-only evangelist” and former high-level staffer in Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services visited Uganda to celebrate the formalisation of a contract between the new women’s organisation and the Ugandan government. They presented the project to a crowd of senior representatives from eight African countries, including the first lady of Gabon. The partners committed to working together to implement Huber’s new project, “Protego Health: The Women’s Optimal Health Framework”….
“While Huber claims Protego is meant to equip countries with ’interventions to support the health and well-being of women and their families’, its more important purpose is to fulfill the objectives of the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD). The GCD is an integral part of Project 2025. Launched with much fanfare in the waning days of the Trump administration, the GCD is an anti-abortion initiative led by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, implemented by Huber, and intended to stake Trump’s claim to global leadership against abortion and LGBTQ rights.”
“On paper, the GCD commits signatories to advancing four “pillars”: improving women’s health, protecting human life, strengthening the family and protecting each country’s national sovereignty “to support their own core values.” But “family” in this context is understood to be in opposition to LGBTQ rights, and “protecting human life” means denying all access to abortion. In practical terms, the one-page document is little more than a Christian nationalist manifesto, with no enforcement power and no mechanisms for accountability. Protego, which is dedicated to implementing the GCD’s four pillars, now gives the manifesto legs and momentum.”
“The GCD gets several mentions in Project 2025, where it is referenced as a guiding document for decision making on foreign policy and abortion. Project 2025’s overall plan to end abortion is uncompromising and its authors promise to “push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction,” including overseas.”….
The report continues at length and in depth with details of where and how Trump supporters are working with rightwing governments and groups to implement their agenda. A must-read.
Details of the Geneva Consensus Declaration when it was first made public can be found here: “Trump’s legacy: a war against women,” ICWRSA Newsletter, 13 November 2020. Uganda was a co-sponsor then too, along with Brazil, Egypt, Hungary and Indonesia. The declaration was signed by 33 countries representing over 1.6 billion people and every region of the world: Bahrain, Belarus, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DR Congo, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eswatini, The Gambia, Georgia, Haiti, Hungary, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, Libya, Nauru, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, USA, Zambia. Biden withdrew the US signature and Brazil and Colombia have since withdrawn theirs too, but three new countries have signed, including Russia.
SOURCE: In These Times, by Gillian Kane, 25 April 2024 ; Trump photo from among the many in the ICWRSA Newsletter article 2020.