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How German foreign policy oriented itself to promoting feminism but quietly supports the mass murder of women in GazaLast year, Germany’s Foreign Office spelled out guidelines for a “feminist” foreign policy, focused on defending marginalized women. Today in Gaza, this same ministry is arming the deadliest war on women and girls this century.
The German Foreign Office first announced its guidelines for a “feminist foreign policy” back in March 2023, yet public debate over the meaning of this policy has never been more heated than in the past month. On October 21, the international research organization responsible for the development of the concept, the Center for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP), along with the human rights NGO
HÁWAR.help, hosted a press conference on the topic “preventing femicides, legalizing abortions.” German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, of the Green Party, took center stage at the conference, along with other high-profile women from the worlds of politics and culture.
These sorts of demands are the lowest common denominator of all feminist movements — and yet hostility was stirring both inside and outside the event, mainly due to Baerbock’s presence. Someone in the audience stood up in protest and shouted, “Stop the genocide of Palestinian women!” and was eventually removed by security. Outside the conference, women protested with signs reading, for example, “Women’s rights shouldn’t mean white privilege.”
The images and videos from the conference and the associated protests have trigged strong responses on social media: the founders of the CFFP were accused of “white feminism,” and prominent international feminists have since resigned from the organization’s advisory board.
This debate has brought to the surface an issue that has been simmering for some time: even though the German Foreign Office claims in its guidelines for a feminist foreign policy to “focus on the rights, representation and resources of women and marginalized groups,” in practice it undermines exactly those rights. In practice, feminist foreign policy is simply meant to give the German government a progressive veneer. The fact that ultimately there is nothing feminist about Baerbock’s policy is made perfectly clear by her policy toward Gaza.
Between August and October 2024, Germany approved more than €94 million worth of arms deliveries to Israel. The foreign minister’s near unconditional support for Israel, even when its army attacks schools and other civilian infrastructure, was made clear when she falsely claimed last month that “civilian sites could lose their protected status [under international law] if terrorists abuse this status.”
In Gaza, more than half a million women are affected by food insecurity, and 175,000 are exposed to life-threatening health risks. In no other conflict in the last two decades have as many women and girls been killed in just one year as in Gaza. If these facts aren’t clear enough, even the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) has recently begun taking legal action against German’s arms deliveries to Israel.
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https://jacobin.com/2024/11/germany-feminist-foreign-policy-gaza
