Politics Against the Weakest - The 10 Million Dollar Contraceptive Depot of Geel as a Battlefield of Trump’s Policy

It does not begin with a decision, but with a sound: the cry “Shame, shame, shame - Trump is to blame,” that drifts across the Rue Zinner this Thursday, over to the US Embassy in Brussels. Around fifty women’s rights activists have gathered, some carrying wooden crosses with inscriptions such as “700+ women dead” and “people will die.” They are protesting against something that sounds technical, distant, and bureaucratic - the possible destruction of a contraceptive stockpile in a warehouse in Flemish Geel financed by the United States - and which in reality decides over life and death. Inside this depot lie birth control pills, implants and IUDs worth more than nine million dollars, paid for by US taxpayers, intended for women in war zones and refugee camps. The boxes are packed, the routes are planned - only the politics have come to a standstill.

The deadlock came when the government in Washington pushed ahead with the dissolution of the US development agency and the “What now?” hovered over the stockpiles. Where previously there was a functioning supply chain, a power vacuum has opened up in which decisions are postponed and responsibilities blurred. Activists calculate what administrative inaction causes: up to 362,000 unintended pregnancies and more than 700 additional deaths of women related to pregnancy and childbirth - not as a horror scenario, but as a likely consequence if the stockpiles do not reach where they are urgently needed. In Tanzania, for example, the planned deliveries cover one third of the nationwide demand. In other words: one and a half million women and girls are waiting for supplies that are stuck in limbo in Europe. These numbers are not a political frame, they are the sober translation of cartons, batch numbers and expiration dates into human lives.

Brussels and the region of Flanders are trying to prevent the worst. In Flanders there is a clear ban on burning reusable goods; an exception would only be possible with the approval of the Environment Minister and after payment of a double incineration levy. So far, no one has applied for such an exception, the responsible authorities inspected the warehouse last week and confirmed that the stockpiles are still there; incineration plants were instructed to immediately report any attempt at destruction. On the US side it is also said that there is no final decision yet; the next steps are still under review. But “reviewing” helps no one when time is running against the weakest. Contraceptives are not abstract objects of debate. They are protection from coercion, from poverty, from preventable maternal mortality - and they are especially so where war, displacement and broken health systems multiply the risks.

The protest in Brussels is therefore not only directed against a possible destruction, but against a calculation that lies behind it: control over bodies and self-determination as a bargaining chip of global politics. Whoever artificially cuts supply chains, puts shipments on hold or even lets them go up in flames is not carrying out a “reorganization” of aid, but exercising power - over women who have no lobby apparatus, no cameras, no microphones. The scene in front of the embassy is small, but it stands for a great principle: it is about the question of whether in international health policy evidence and humanity prevail - or ideology and domestic political symbolism. At the fences of missions and ministries decisions are often packaged as “technical.” In the villages of Congo, Kenya, Mali, Tanzania or Zambia, the technical has another name: birth at night without a midwife, a pregnancy too early, a preventable hemorrhage - or an IUD that arrives in time.

The responsibility is spread out, and therein lies the danger. If no one decides clearly, if responsibilities circulate between Washington and Europe, if even banal logistics are politicized, inertia wins in the end - and it always hits the wrong people. The Flemish rules set limits on destruction, but they do not replace a political decision for delivery. The “Not yet decided” from the State Department does not replace freight papers. And the reference that the agency is “under restructuring” does not replace supply. Whoever takes the right to reproductive health seriously cannot make this stockpile a trophy of an ideological battle. It must leave the warehouse and go where it protects people.

That is why the cry “Shame” at noon does not sound like just another slogan, but like a last reminder of what politics at its core is: the responsibility not to increase the number of the dead with one’s own decisions. Everything else is pretexts.