It should be in a week, and expectations in the coalition are already rising: When Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Development Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) present their guidelines for a feminist foreign policy on Wednesday next week, they should be realigned of previous diplomacy succeed – so the claim from the government alliance.
“A feminist foreign policy by the federal government must claim to improve the living conditions of millions of women worldwide,” says Ulrich Lechte, foreign policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, WELT. “By using more funds for projects that benefit women, the Federal Republic can become the international pioneer of modern foreign policy.” Feminist foreign policy is the promotion of equality worldwide, because equality leads to stronger democracy and a free society.
“Equal rights for women should be brought to the fore wherever it is necessary,” said Lechte. The conflicts and wars of the past decades have shown that women represent a particularly vulnerable social group and that their interests must be taken more into account in peace negotiations. “Women play a fundamental role in crisis prevention, mediation and peacekeeping, which needs to be given more focus.”
“As many studies show, the chances of peace processes being successful increase, for example, when all perspectives are involved and not just those who have caused a lot of suffering with violence,” says Agnieszka Brugger, Vice President of the Greens parliamentary group. Appropriate structures in the ministry, international alliances, more cooperation with civil society, a budget strategy and a commissioner will ensure that it is not just fine words.
“Feminist foreign policy is not a magic wand, nor is it an abstract vision; it shows new and better options for action compared to an old, often undemanding foreign policy,” says Brugger. The guidelines for feminist foreign policy are an important building block on which the National Security Strategy will be built.
SPD parliamentary group deputy Gabriela Heinrich called for a humanitarian, financial and diplomatic focus to be placed on women in questions of war and peace in the future. “The centuries-old patriarchal power structures in international relations need to be broken up and dissolved. In the end, everyone benefits from this, women and men alike.” That must be a fundamental goal of German foreign policy, to which all ambassadors should feel committed.
Heinrich asked Baerbock to provide the financial basis for the realignment. “The Federal Foreign Office should ensure that feminist foreign policy does not remain an abstract concept in its budget either.” It is well known that countries are more successful economically when women are involved accordingly. “That’s why we support the proposal by Federal Development Minister Schulze to invest more than 90 percent of German development funds in projects to strengthen gender equality.”
The CDU foreign policy expert Jürgen Hardt expresses concern that with the planned “cultural change” Baerbock could say goodbye to the “professional diplomacy” with which German diplomats have “represented German interests worldwide in a culturally sensitive manner” for many decades. So far, the staff council has “apparently not been involved in the least in the preparation of the guidelines,” says Hardt. “Annalena Baerbock would be well-advised to move away from bold phrases and get specific.”
Specifically, feminist foreign policy could have shown itself through an immediate and unequivocal positioning alongside the protesting women in Iran. “Unfortunately, the German reaction from the Chancellery and the Foreign Office to the women’s protests in Iran came too late and too lukewarm.” They didn’t want to mess with the misogynist rulers in Tehran and ultimately didn’t do anyone justice.
AfD faction leader Alice Weidel speaks of a “nonsensical fraudulent labeling”. Good foreign policy is always realpolitik and cannot be loaded with ideological constructs. “A foreign minister who takes up the cause of ‘feminist foreign policy’ has therefore not understood the task and importance of her office and is obviously the wrong choice.”
Sevim Dagdelen, Chairwoman of the Left in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag, criticized: “Anyone like Annalena Baerbock who approves arms deliveries to the head-on dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, who brutally disenfranchises women in their own country and ruthlessly kills them in the Yemen war, should of a value-based and feminist foreign policy better to remain silent. This double standard is simply unbearable.” A realistic and peaceful foreign policy is needed that relies on diplomacy for a negotiated solution in Ukraine, instead of always talking about new arms deliveries and a war against Russia.
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