The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — an independent agency that administers $27 billion in foreign-aid programs, including development, poverty and disaster relief — has removed all references of LGBTQ people, contraception and gender identity (an inclusive term acknowledging transgender people) from its revised draft of its Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy.
The 2012 version of the policy included these mentions, but the erasure is just the latest move from the Trump Administration in continually erasing LGBTQ people and reproductive rights from U.S.
policy. The revised draft removes all of the 2012 version’s mentions of gender identity which had been defined in the document as “an individual’s