When you start with Feminist Foreign Policy, many people say: What are you talking about? Some are bothered by the term feminism. Others are bothered by the fact that anything at all is different. And still others think: Finally! But they ask themselves: What is actually behind it?
I will begin by explaining what feminist foreign policy means with three pictures.
There is Marzia, 15 years old. In spring, she stood in front of her closed school in Afghanistan with tears in her eyes. Because since the Taliban violently took back control of the country, school attendance, and the right to education is no longer a matter of course for an entire generation of girls.
Then there is the picture of a mother in northern Mali whom I met there when I visited the German soldiers stationed in Mali. She had come to the compound of the International Protection Mission and appealed urgently: Please don’t abandon us! We already hardly dare to go to the market and sell our vegetables – because we are afraid of being abducted and raped.
And for the third picture, dear guests, I would like to ask you in the hall. Let us assume that you are depicting a regular parliament in this world. If we look at the German Bundestag and many other parliaments, only every fourth seat is occupied by a woman. That would be as if only women were in the room up to the gentleman with the blue mask (in the front quarter of the hall), and after that, there were only men. Everyone would say: What kind of a strange conference is this? With parliaments, however, we have somehow gotten used to it.
This means we have a lot to do – not only in faraway countries but also here with us, in the German Bundestag.
Girls who are denied education. Women cannot take care of their livelihood for fear of violence. Parliaments that do not represent their society in its diversity. These three images show why a feminist foreign policy is not only necessary but why it is overdue and why it is a no-brainer.
Because no country in this world, no economy, no society can afford it if half of the population cannot have an equal say or contribute.
McKinsey calculated in a 2015 study that equal participation of women in the global labor market could increase global GDP by 26 percent within ten years. Enough to lift large parts of the world out of poverty.
So not only is it a crucial right of women and marginalized groups to be able to participate on equal terms, but it is economic madness not to pursue a feminist foreign policy. It is about society as a whole. It’s not about doing less, it’s about doing more: bringing everyone to the table – expanding, rather than artificially limiting ourselves.
That’s why we’ll develop guidelines for a German feminist foreign policy over the next few months. Fortunately, we are not starting from scratch, and fortunately, we are not doing it alone. Instead, we can learn from others who have already set out on this path.
And that is why I am delighted to welcome colleagues today from very many different regions of the world. From Rwanda to Mexico, Albania, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden. But members of the German Bundestag are also here, as are representatives of other ministries, ambassadors from all over the world and, above all, many actors from civil society. And on behalf of this civil society, I would like to welcome the Global Partner Network for Feminist Foreign Policy – because that is where the concept of feminist foreign policy comes from. Thank you for paving the way for us in the governments and foreign ministries.
I am particularly pleased that you, dear Shaharzad Akbar, are with us today. Because you don’t just talk about it theoretically, as I do – but you know how it feels: when – on the positive side – you finally manage to ensure that women’s rights are valued in your own country, that girls can go to school, for example. And unfortunately – and this is the dramatic side – you know all the more how it feels when these rights that have been fought for are snatched away again. As Chair of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, you have worked tirelessly on behalf of women in your country – and you continue to do so from exile. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for that.
You speak for the women and girls of Afghanistan, you are their voice. Because when others can’t speak, they need advocates. For girls like Marzia, whom I mentioned at the beginning. You said the other day about her situation: these girls feel the world is moving on – but they are left behind. That’s why we are here today to listen to you – to represent the hundreds of thousands, the millions of girls and women in Afghanistan that we will not leave behind. This conference belongs to them, even if they cannot be with us today.
The critical thing about foreign policy, not just a feminist foreign policy, is that you always keep in mind: It’s not just a matter of quick success. Some planks have to be drilled over the years, over decades. But the crucial thing is to start and never give up.
Ladies and gentlemen, even if this comes across as a bit blatant, the truth is that you are not here today as guests because of such thick boards. Instead, you are a crucial part of our process towards a feminist foreign policy – a policy that we can only shape together globally.
Because no country in the world has yet achieved true equality.
And just like for you pioneers in Sweden, dear Ann Linde, we also focus on the “three R’s” that you have invented:
Rights, resources and representation. We want to “mainstream” feminist foreign policy with a view to these three Rs. This is an unwieldy term, but it means something very concrete: namely, that a feminist foreign policy is not an appendage but a way of acting that runs through our entire foreign and security policy.
That sounds obvious, but I think everyone in this room knows exactly the difference. Whether we say that we are also doing something for women. Or whether you take the approach of real mainstreaming and say: this applies to all areas.
And unfortunately, there is still much that is the same today as there was ten years ago. We have experienced this in meetings when it was said: Yes, we also have a feminist security policy because a modern organization must have a feminist security policy. The women in the room then said: are we doing this pro forma because we want to be a modern organization and that’s the way it should be today – or are we doing it because security policy only works if everyone in society is involved from the outset?
The feminist foreign policy runs through all the strands of action of our governments. Feminist foreign policy is a foreign policy that takes diversity into account in all its diversity – a diversity that we will also anchor in our new National Security Strategy.
Feminist foreign policy implements what we defined years ago as human security. It puts people at the center, regardless of their origin, gender, faith or who they love. When we give special attention to women and marginalized groups, it makes our security policy more inclusive. It makes them and us more robust.
And that’s what the first “R”, the rights, is all about.
We are seeing this in a dramatic way in Ukraine at the moment, where certain groups are suffering particularly from violence, particularly from Russia’s cruel war. It affects women, the elderly, and children in particular. It affects precisely those who cannot flee so quickly or are attacked because of their gender – in addition to all the brutalities and hardships of war. It affects chronically ill people and people with disabilities who cannot get their vital treatment in the turmoil of war. And women, girls, but also men and boys who are abused.
That is why we are helping the courageous people of Ukraine to defend themselves these days: With economic, political and military support. But that is only one thing.
The other is that when rights are broken, that wrong will eventually be charged. That, too, is part of the “R”, rights: that we guarantee the right to protection and, where we cannot implement it, bring the perpetrators who violate and abuse rights to justice.
We will do everything we can to achieve this: In cooperation with the International Criminal Court, human rights organizations, and prosecutors. Because when the perpetrators walk free, the victims walk in fear. This is how Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad put it in a nutshell concerning the crimes committed against the Yezidis. And that is why what we are doing in Ukraine about sexualized violence and bringing crimes against women to justice is so crucial these days.
I see some people here in this room who did this when it was not yet a matter of course: they not only saw the crimes against the Yazidis, the slavery and rape as a brutal part of genocide. They named them and then brought them to trial here in Germany and in other countries. Many thanks for this – this is also a building block in our standard feminist foreign policy.
I emphasize this so clearly here – more clearly than with the other two “R”. Because you can see that there is injustice in the resources if you simply look at the figures, at how money and power are distributed. But when it comes to rights, the reflex often comes: Why? Human rights are human rights. They also apply to women. Where do we have a legal gap?
And I think that’s also what we’re seeing right now in the national debates on equality. We can be so grateful for what our mothers and grandmothers fought for: That they could vote, that they could choose their profession, that they could have a bank account. That’s when you saw the injustice when you had to get your spouse to sign before you could work as a woman.
Now, this struggle – and I still call it a struggle – is on a different level because structural discrimination or the use of violence is an expression of a violation of rights, and then it is not a question of a law that prohibits one from exercising one’s rights, as is unfortunately still the case in Afghanistan.
That’s why it’s all the more important that where we see rights being attacked structurally or about the constitution or criminal codes, we don’t ignore it and say: “Oh, it won’t be so bad – let’s see what happens.” But we understand this is also an attack on liberal, free societies.
We have also seen this in the brutal Russian war of aggression. We also see this in other countries when the Istanbul Convention is suddenly withdrawn. That is an attack on women’s rights and therefore an attack on human rights.
In Russia, it went hand in hand with the arrest and murder of opposition members, journalists, or those who stood up against the Kremlin’s stance: Of course, it was no coincidence that suddenly domestic violence was also defined differently in the penal code. It was no coincidence, of course, that domestic violence was suddenly defined differently in the penal code and that you had to, let me put it bluntly, beat your wife twice in hospital for it to become a criminal offense.
I think we have to keep this in mind: the issue of violence against women in so-called everyday life.
Because women’s rights are an indicator of the free and democratic state of our societies. That is precisely why they are not a women’s issue but a human rights, democracy, and the rule of law issue.
It is therefore essential that we actively raise these rights on the international agenda. This is the conference here in Berlin today, so I am very honored that so many participants are here in person. We will continue this together as Foreign Ministers, and shortly also at the United Nations General Assembly.
And this conference will have a follow-up conference. The Netherlands has already agreed to host the next Feminist Foresight Policy Conference. Many thanks to the Netherlands for this.
This networking between ministries, countries, between governments is important because we see what we can achieve if we pull together and don’t each do it for ourselves in our own national business.
In March, at the 66th UN Commission on the Status of Women, for the first time, UN Member States were able to jointly adopt concrete measures to strengthen women’s rights in addressing the climate crisis, the most significant security challenge of our time.
And this is only the beginning. The next step is now to continue to consistently implement the issue of women’s rights regarding the security crisis “climate change”. The climate conference is just around the corner. There too, of course, Feminist Foreign Policy, the Feminist Climate Policy, will play a significant role in the UNFCCC negotiations. And why? Because it is not only about saving the climate but also about the question of resources, about the question of money, for example with “adaptation” and “loss and damage”.
We have to be careful that when we start to deal with a crisis – and fortunately, with the combined forces of the climate crisis, we are making a lot of international climate money available – we embed the gender aspect in our minds and even more so in the treaties right from the start.
That’s the second “R,” which is resources.
This is the money where it is clear that it cannot be looked at only from a male perspective, not only from a privileged perspective, but it has to be considered from the beginning how these resources are available to all people.
Because it is clear that a neutral or gender-blind budget does not automatically exist, when it comes to money, when it comes to power and resources, there are of course always interests. And that is why, when we promote when we support, we must always have gender justice in mind. That’s why we will try – and this is one of the thick planks – to subject our work as a foreign ministry to gender budgeting concerning funding projects. Here, too, we can learn from other countries.
However, we must, of course, also jointly transfer this to international organizations. Because to be able to take more excellent account of the strengthening of women’s rights and participation in the allocation of funds, the first thing we need is data. Where do they actually go? Which people and groups of people do they go to?
And we need verifiable targets on how to redirect when funds are not distributed equitably.
That brings me to my third “R”, representation.
Because, of course, when only individual groups sit at the table, the question of where funds go is also discussed and decided differently than when everyone sits at the table.
For all of us here, it is clear: we do not see women and girls as victims, but as part of the solution, as crucial actors when it comes to negotiating peace agreements or better protecting their country from climate damage.
It is therefore vital that this view be taken into account not only in peace negotiation groups but also in the question of “adaptation”, of “loss and damage”, of climate funds.
Because the participation, the implementation of the solution, takes place on the ground – in the villages, on the farms, sometimes in the fields and in the communities: In Chad, where we support women as mediators in conflicts between farmers and herders. In Iraq, where we promote women’s participation in conflict prevention, one of the most prominent supporters of the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund.
Or at home, for that matter. Because feminist foreign policy starts at home.
I was visiting a country where I didn’t expect Feminist Foreign Policy to be the first topic my interlocutor brought up. And then it started with him saying: “We’d also like to follow a Feminist Foreign Diplomacy”.
For me, this has once again underlined the fact that we can take a close look at countries and governments that are perhaps not yet quite so far advanced: Where are the points of contact where we can learn from each other?
Since for us Feminist Foreign Policy starts in the Foreign Office, Feminist Foreign Diplomacy is one of our important areas of work that concerns ourselves: To achieve change, to take action ourselves, and to question our own structures, our own resources in our own houses.
So for all of us who do feminist foreign diplomacy, it’s a given that you don’t travel with an all-male delegation. The advantage is that if you are a woman yourself, then you have already covered one point. But you still have to look at it: What about the women journalists I’m taking with me? Otherwise, the whole picture suddenly becomes distorted, while you yourself think you’re doing quite well. It’s not just the politicians, the state secretaries, and the civil servants, but we represent our countries in all their diversity on our travels.
That’s why it’s our colleagues from Protocol or even the BKA officers who make up part of our Feminist Foreign Policy.
Because what we do is not only put into words but how we are is a mirror for others. When you enter a room and you come with a diverse group, of course, it reflects something on the other side.
Often one experiences that one comes in as part of a delegation and then comes from the other side: “Oh, with us our women were sick today.” You don’t have to have said anything. In case of doubt, you simply have to be there because it is noticeable when groups are not diverse.
And of course, that reflects back. When I look into this room now, I see a diverse audience. The Federal Foreign Office is not that diverse, neither in terms of women and men nor in terms of origin. That, too, is an essential part of our Feminist Foreign Policy: diversity.
We represent millions of people. I represent 82 million citizens. It’s good that after 150 years a woman is standing at the very front. But I also represent many people who live in Germany in the second and third generation. And in this sense, too, we still have a lot to do in terms of diversity.
So I am very pleased that this morning in the workshops we have already worked together on how we can make a practical difference.
We now have two women among three State Secretaries at the Federal Foreign Office. We have 43 female ambassadors at the missions abroad. But logically, we are not only on the ground in 43 or 86 countries with embassies but in many more.
If we look at our House as a whole, we have a proportion of 27 percent in management positions. I may be boring the guests from abroad a bit with our German figures, but it is to make clear how much support we still need from you, too, for our work here in Germany.
Because I believe that a feminist foreign policy can only work if, above all, we listen, that we do not come to preach and tell what we have always known and believed, but that we are ready for new things and ready to learn from others.
Feminist Foreign Policy is a policy that simply recognizes and finally addresses the inequalities of our world in the 21st century – whether in the schools of Afghanistan, in the markets of Mali, or in our own departmental meetings or debates in the Bundestag.
And our policy does not do this with a raised forefinger or dogmatic slogans. No, we do it with very concrete, pragmatic measures.
Simply because it is correct. And because it benefits us all.
In this sense: We all have much joy and many insights in the next few hours. But above all, much strength to all of us on the way to a just, equal society and world.
Here are many in the room who are already convinced. But it is also clear that the headwind blows fiercely and often in our faces. In Afghanistan, it is almost unbearable, but sometimes it is also with us.
When we started, not everyone applauded right away. I just think that we should understand that this headwind – in German they say: What doesn’t kill you, hardens you – that’s relatively harsh, but: that this headwind only makes you stronger in doubt because you know you’re fighting for the right cause.
Ann Linde said: At least we no longer have the giggles we used to have. Headwinds can also be tailwinds if we use them together and understand them for what they are: the necessary things we have to do together and the order not to shy away from slight breezes of headwind.
What a sign that would be to the girls and women in Afghanistan who go to school even though they are forbidden to do so, who have to fight every day for the rights we take for granted – even if it is only by going out into the streets alone.
In that sense, this conference is dedicated to women and girls in Afghanistan.
It is a great honor to give you the floor, Mrs. Shaharzad Akbar. You represent and represent the best of Afghanistan. Thank you very much for being here today.