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Women's rights and gender
Activities: Implementing women's rights – Tapping into potentials
Realising gender equality is one of the key challenges faced by the international community. Germany has also obligated itself thereto in numerous international agreements and declarations. Germany thus promotes diverse measures to eliminate discrimination against women and girls as part of its development cooperation. At international level the German government is in particular committed to improving women's legal situation. Germany is working hard to
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remove obstacles that prevent women participating equally in economic life;
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embed the human rights and gender approach more deeply in international development cooperation;
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take the needs of women into account more in the fight against HIV/AIDS;
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realise the sexual and reproductive self-determination rights of women and men in equal measure
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ensure that the harmful traditional practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) soon becomes a thing of the past; and to
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put an end to all forms of violence against women.
Locally, in the partner countries of German development cooperation, Germany among other things aims to ensure that
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the issue of gender equality is incorporated into national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs);
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women and girls are actively involved in political, economic and social processes; and
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women and men have equal access to land ownership and education.
Further, German development cooperation supports women's networks and women's non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Since the 2000 Millennium Summit Germany has provided 9.2 billion euros of bilateral development cooperation, that is some 43 per cent of total ODA, to projects that - regardless of their actual goal - have a positive impact on gender equality. In addition, since that date 757 million euros in funding has been committed to projects whose primary goal is gender equality.
The BMZ also provides 18 million euros in funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 5 million euros to the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF), and currently 818,000 euros each year to the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) (2009).
