BERLIN: Germany’s centre-left government on Wednesday (Mar 1) released new guidelines set to shape all diplomacy and development work including the creation of a new role for an “ambassador for feminist foreign policy”.
Germany will lobby to ensure women’s concerns are more in focus worldwide, that women are increasingly included in peace processes and that €12 billion (US$12.8 billion) of German development funds are allocated more to projects that tackle gender inequality, according to the foreign and development ministry guidelines.
Given Germany’s clout as Europe’s biggest economy and a key diplomatic actor, the move gives fresh momentum to the feminist foreign policy movement, which was pioneered by a leftist Swedish government in 2014.
Such a policy has been embraced in recent years by other countries like Canada, France, Mexico and Spain – although Sweden abandoned it last year after a shift to a right-wing government.
“We will work hard to give our foreign service a more female face and to raise the proportion of women in senior roles,” Germany’s first female foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said in the introduction to the 88-page long guidelines.
“We will also more systematically allocate our financial resources in the service of feminist foreign policy,” the Greens politician said.
Baerbock has already made a point on her trips abroad to address gender issues such as sexual violence during the conflict in Ukraine and abortion in the United States.
Critics say the government needs to avoid coming across as moralising. Sweden antagonised several allies after it started focusing more on gender equality and human rights in its diplomacy.
“We must not make the error of mixing up value-oriented foreign policy with moralising foreign policy,” Bijan Djir-Sarai, the general secretary of junior coalition partner the Free Democrats, told broadcaster Welt.
Source: CNA
