Feminist Foreign Policy: From Goal Setting to Implementation

Germany’s government has enshrined a feminist foreign policy (FFP) in its coalition agreement – an unprecedented historical milestone. The ruling coalition is basing the implementation of FFP on the “3Rs,” meaning that the rights, resources, and representation of women, girls, and diverse marginalized groups are to be taken into account and strengthened at all levels.

The government took this step because the perspectives and experiences of women and marginalized groups have been repeatedly excluded from the shaping of foreign policy processes and decisions, which is detrimental to their effectiveness. As both a theoretical concept and practice, feminist foreign policy aims to change this. Pursuing an inclusive, gender-sensitive, and human rights-based approach, it centers (foreign) policy decision-making processes around perspectives that have so far received little or no consideration.

FFP is moving away from an understanding of security that focuses solely on nation-state security and toward a more comprehensive concept of security. This concept takes into account that people are affected differently by a variety of threats: not only by armed conflicts but also by climate change or food insecurity, all of which are impacted by their relationships to global power and inequality. An intersectional, feminist approach questions these relationships and tries to counteract them from a local to a global level.

DGAP’s project “Feminist Foreign Policy: From Goal Setting to Implementation” aims to create action-oriented recommendations. It accompanies the implementation of Feminist Foreign Policy with sound analyses and seeks to address the question of how an all-encompassing intersectional feminist approach can be realized in Germany’s foreign policy decision-making processes. In doing so, it will develop solution-oriented options for implementing FFP.

Focus is given to three thematic priorities:

• What does the implementation of a Feminist Foreign Policy mean for other policy areas, e.g., climate policy and security policy? How can a feminist approach be implemented coherently?
• To what extent can FFP be linked to, complement, and further develop existing concepts and mechanisms, such as UN Security Council Resolution 1325; the agenda Women, Peace, Security; or international humanitarian law?
• Which dilemmas and challenges does the German government face in implementing its feminist objective with regard to Germany’s role in the global and geopolitical order?