Department head Baerbock has made feminist foreign policy the guiding principle of her administration. On her trip to Latin America, she learned how this can be implemented against all odds.
“Feminist foreign policy” – that is the term that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wants to associate with her person in this office. This maxim runs like a red thread on her trip to Latin America from Brazil via Colombia to Panama. She meets people who think further than many in Germany.
Baerbock flinches as she stands next to Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez at a press conference when she is asked about the latest racist remarks based on her skin color. You can see from the Secretary of State how shocked she is by the hostilities Marquez has to endure every day. “My full solidarity,” Baerbock expresses to her and sharply condemns any racist hostilities.
You can tell how busy she is and how she feels the resistance in the country. A strong woman is the Colombian Vice President, who has already fought many battles. Baerbock is suddenly in a different political environment in Colombia: Political advisors, a female delegation, are sitting across from her – she is not used to this from Berlin’s political scene, where men still predominate.
Living Feminism in Colombia
Francia Marquez has not only escaped death once, she has been the target of several attacks. No one is allowed to know exactly where the Colombian Vice President lives. Marquez is black, she belongs to the minority in the country. In the affluent district of Bogota, they say: “That could be my cleaning lady, but it’s not a high-ranking politician.”
Marquez says of herself that a lot of people in society think women like her shouldn’t be in politics. That is not desired, she is met with great feminist hatred.
A generation that knows no peace
Colombia has more than 50 years of civil war behind it. The Marquez generation knows no peace. But she wants peace. The country’s ceasefire talks entered a crucial phase over the weekend.
For Baerbock, the participation of women in such processes is crucial. During her visit to Cali, she emphasized that in Colombia it was becoming clear that there would be no peace without women. Everything is connected to everything. Without peace there is no climate protection and without climate protection there is no sustainable development.
Climate protection is a big topic
The great willingness in many countries to push ahead with the energy transition also seems unusual. Colombia wants to get out of coal by 2030, hoping for the “know-how” from Germany. Such words flatter the German foreign minister. Climate policy and feminist foreign policy in one – that’s how it could go anywhere according to Baerbock’s taste.
And so a red thread runs through their trip: the combination of strong women and the willingness to do more for climate protection – be it in Colombia, but also in Panama, where Foreign Minister Janaina Tewaney talks about hydrogen and new energies talks and the importance of protecting the rainforest. The Panama Canal is too badly affected by climate change. There is not enough water in the canal, it rains too little – that would eventually affect global trade. Alarming words that also make Baerbock think.
Feminist foreign policy – still nonsense?
When the Foreign Minister says such sentences in Latin America, nobody in the audience raises their eyebrows. Baerbock in Germany is all too familiar with rejection of this policy. It was Union faction leader Friedrich Merz who called out to Baerbock in the Bundestag a year ago that she could do feminist foreign policy, but please not with the budget for the Bundeswehr.
When Baerbock started to replicate and said it broke her heart, Merz still laughed and grabbed his chest. He later fell silent when Baerbock described how raped women in the former Yugoslavia thanked her because finally someone had listened to them. Since then, Merz has never tried to ridicule the subject again.
Lived independence in Brasil
The women in the Amazon estuary have to smile when Baerbock explains to them that feminist foreign policy is now being implemented in Germany. “Gender-sensitive” projects like yours – the cultivation and marketing of cocoa and acai in the rainforest of Combu – are to be supported.
What the Foreign Minister wishes for has long been practiced here: Only what they need is grown sustainably. You earn 300 euros a year with it. Without any men who worked in the factory.
Latin America farther than Germany
In Cali, Colombia, as Francia Marquez, the country’s vice president, walks onto the stage to accept the UNIDAS award – an award from the German-Latin American women’s network, for which the German foreign minister has assumed patronage – security guards gather around the stage .
For 20 years she was to be murdered because she defended peace, Marquez says proudly and confidently. At the end of the event, both women embrace. Annalena Baerbock has great respect for this woman of the same age. She says Latin America is far ahead of Germany in feminist foreign policy.