Abstract Drawing on research on the anti-gender phenomenon, this article aims to examine how anti-gender actors, who are part of an ultraconservative transnational advocacy network, advance their political agenda in the Organization of American States (OAS) human rights arenas. Although literature has been successful in demonstrating at length that anti-gender actors are part of a well-worked transnational network, there is a lack of understanding of how these actors work to advance their agenda in regional arenas beyond Europe, such as the OAS. Recognizing that various strategies and mechanisms of competing advocacy forms are at play in transnational venues, we argue that the OAS Inter-American Human Rights System (IAS) serve as a key site of transnational anti-gender coordination and political transformation. We follow the double-helix metaphor presented by Ayoub and Stoeckl (2023) to understand how the competitive dynamic between feminists and LGBTQIA+ activists, and anti-gender actors is present in IAS and its effects on the human rights framework in the region. Thus, this research aims to contribute to this literature by drawing attention to the Americas and to the strategies transnational anti-gender offensives use at the IAS to advance their political agenda.
Abstract The university has become a central target of neoconservative policies and discourses associated with the New Right in contemporary international politics, exemplified by leaders such as Viktor Orbán, Donald Trump, and Jair Bolsonaro. This article employs Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the conditions that enabled the resurgence of neoconservatism in discourses and policies directed at higher education in Brazil prior to the Bolsonaro administration. Focusing on the government program Uma Ponte para o Futuro (A Bridge to the Future), it argues that Michel Temer’s administration (2016-2018) advanced a neoconservative policy of reprivatization. This approach, while more subtle, instrumentalizes neoliberal austerity to restrict the presence of identity-based policies and debates in the public sphere. The article further argues that, despite its relative subtlety, this project cannot be understood as local or isolated, but rather as part of the emergence of global discursive networks that challenge the role of the university and its contribution to knowledge production.
Abstract The Africa Group has emerged as a leading voice in global health governance, advocating for equity in two key pandemic instruments: the 2024 revision of the International Health Regulations (IHR) and the WHO-led Pandemic Agreement. This study provides a review of the Group’s official proposals (2022–2025) for both instruments. It questions how – and with what objectives – they were articulated and assesses the extent to which they advance equity, especially in the sharing of health products and technologies. Grounded in Critical Global Health Studies, we hypothesize that the Africa Group’s equity demands were not fully addressed in the final texts. We categorize the proposals into four priority areas and compare them to the latest drafts of these international instruments to assess incorporation. Several proposals were partially included – such as language on allocating a share of health products to developing countries and a joint financing mechanism. However, many core demands, particularly enforceable equity measures and benefit-sharing obligations, were softened, reworded, or excluded. Political flexibility by African states enabled consensus, but effective implementation hinges on future negotiations and sustained advocacy. Overall, these instruments partially respond to the Africa Group’s agenda yet fall short of transformative reform, leaving equity commitments largely non-binding.
Abstract Private military companies (PMCs) have gained prominence in the international arena since the end of the Cold War. Offering a wide range of services, these companies have been contracted by state and private actors to operate in international conflicts. The use of these companies, however, has raised suspicions about the legitimacy of their actions, especially when they provide agents for direct involvement in conflicts occurring in fragile states. This is because these groups have promoted massacres against unarmed civilian populations, which no longer constitute collateral damage but rather a target. A target of necropower exercised by PMCs in the context of what Achilles Mbembe termed contemporary wars, where war is not only waged by states and their regular armies, but where coercion has become a market product, and military service can be bought and sold. The objective of this article, therefore, is to analyse the actions of PMCs in conflict situations in fragile states as an exercise of necropower, where technologies of destruction are used and sovereign decisions are made about life and death. To this end, the methodology employed is a conceptual and theoretical analysis, applying Foucault, Agamben, and Mbembe’s concepts to the PMCs’ actions in fragile states.
Abstract In recent decades, the increase in discussions on institutional change has relativised the assumption of institutional stability, linked to the effectiveness or durability of cultural and societal patterns. However, the main focus of these studies has been on the role of exogenous factors, neglecting slower processes independent of critical junctures. In dialogue with these efforts, this article seeks to answer the following questions:1) How can ideas incrementally impact an international organisation? 2) How endogenously do these ideas resonate in such a way as to bring about institutional change in terms of agenda, institutional design, and policy programmes? To this end, we propose an analytical framework based on the contributions of Mahone and Thelen (2010) and Campbell (2004). Applying the new framework, we analyse the impact and consolidation of feminist ideas on the United Nations, from a perspective of endogenous and gradual institutional change. We argue that feminist ideas have caused a broad and deep institutional change in the organisation with the insertion of the theme on the agenda, the creation of commissions, programmes, and new bodies, culminating in the creation of UN Women and the SDGs
