Political Declaration on Feminist Approaches to Foreign Policy
On September 20, 2023, the representatives of governments of countries of the FFP+ group, including Albania, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Israel, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Mongolia, Rwanda, Spain, The Kingdom of the Netherlands and Tunisia, met in New York during the High Level Week of the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. This engagement concerned a high-level event on Feminist Foreign Policy.
Following this high-level event, the FFP+ group adopted a political declaration on Feminist Approaches to Foreign Policy.
Broadly, the declaration recognized gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in all their diversity as crucial for implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action fully. It also recognized the need to promote, protect and fulfill human rights, promote peace and security around the globe and make progress across all goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially combatting the feminization of poverty.
Against this background, the FFP+ group reaffirmed the commitment of their governments to “take feminist, intersectional, and gender-transformative approaches to their foreign policies.” They grounded this on the goal of mainstreaming gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in all their diversity, while taking into account the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination to which they may be subjected. They propose to work in close cooperation with feminist civil society and movements.
The declaration named six actions:
1. Demonstrating an ambitious commitment to advance gender equality and the empowerment and autonomy of women and girls in all their diversity, as well as women’s full, equal and meaningful participation at all levels in decision making, to prevent all forms of discrimination and violence against them and promote, protect and fulfill their human rights.
2. Integrating feminist principles throughout their foreign policies to the best of their ability, while acknowledging that members of the FFP+ Group may be at different stages of design, implementation and evaluation of feminist approaches in their foreign policy or Feminist Foreign Policies.
3. Striving to ensure the human rights and social, economic and political representation of all women, as well as their equitable access to resources, which will make societies just, inclusive and prosperous and will contribute to peacebuilding and sustaining peace.
4. Collaborating within the UN system, multilateral contexts, regional and bilateral contexts via their capitals and missions abroad to boost their collective efforts towards global gender equality, including by tackling the root causes of unequal power relations and structures.
5. Cooperating closely with feminist civil society and movements to include their voices in policy-making and decision-making processes, following the principle of ‘nothing about us, without us’.
6. Committing to meet regularly within the context of the Feminist Foreign Policy Plus group in New York and other regional and international fora, to shape feminist foreign policies, and to exchange best practices and lessons learned regarding the different feminist approaches.
