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Foreign policy, development assistance/international cooperation and human rights broader public. The pursuit of “values” – often equated with human rights – is usually juxtaposed to the pursuit of “interests” (Berliner Zeitung 2011; Zeit 2013a; Zeit 2013b). Against a background of changing geopolitical power relations, a recurrent question in the debate is whether and to which degree Germany should include human rights as a (major) criterion in its foreign and development policy. Past and present Ministers for Economic Cooperation and Development have often declared that interests and values can be combined. Which is another allusion to Germany’s past, the policy of “change through rapprochement” towards former East Germany: economic cooperation will lead to political change in the long run. Both foreign and development personnel often declare that Germany acts behind the scenes in order to achieve human rights progress without forcing partners to lose face. For those working on holding Germany to account for its development policy and implementation, it is a challenge to pierce this argumentation in order to verify whether Germany has acted in good faith – or if it simply served its own interests. The ongoing debate about the direction and strategy of German foreign policy is driven by several dominant factors. First, Germany has been facing increasing demands from the international community to take on a more active role in international politics, most evident in the area of security policy. While this has been building up since the early 1990s, Germany seems to have woken up to this rather recently (Spiegel 2014). Its reluctance to assume such a role might be attributed, on the one hand, to a desire to demonstrate its reliability to its partners and not undertake unilateral coercive measures, on the other to domestic, in particular economic, interests. In security policy, Germany has been rather the paymaster in the background, which prevented it from facing casualties from robust peacekeeping missions (Kundnani 2014). A 2014 foreign policy review, initiated by the German Foreign Office, resonates with this debate. It also cites a range of institutional preconditions which need to be put into place for an effective foreign policy, in particular the need for more space for strategic reflection and capacities for quick reaction (Auswärtiges Amt 2014b). Second, the German economy relies to a large extent on export (OECD 2015; Speciale 2015) and thus on good relations with other countries, irrespective of their political system or human rights situation. Unsurprisingly, areas of development cooperation, where Germany can conceptually integrate both values and interests, such as climate change adaptation and mitigation, technology exchange and cooperation with the private sector, have been on the agenda of the last Ministers even across administrations. Last but not least, Germany, due to its history as well as to its middle power status, articulates multilateralism as a cornerstone of its foreign policy. However, while development Ministers usually emphasize the need for cooperation and partnership, at a closer look, they do 62 Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy | Germany
Foreign policy, development assistance/international cooperation and human rights not always invest the necessary resources in understanding and influencing multilateral decision-making within existing multilateral institutions. Development policy – the impact of institutions and processes Germany has, next to a Foreign Office, also a fully-fledged ministry dealing explicitly with development cooperation, the ’Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development’, (Ministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, BMZ). 2 The Minister and the heads of department usually change with each new administration. Most incoming Ministers are new to the issue and pursue their own agendas (Development and Cooperation 2015), thus changing the direction of the Ministry every four to eight years. The Foreign Office has the lead when it comes to human rights in foreign policies. It deals with key human rights processes, eg. the UN procedures in Geneva, and has a coordinating function with regard to how other ministries are consulted in certain matters of relevance to them. BMZ is lead responsible for developing and implementing bilateral and multilateral cooperation policy and can shape it accordingly (eg. on the World Bank Executive Director’s office, European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, UN Working Group on the Right to Development). Within BMZ, one division 3 currently situated in the department for “Global Issues – sector policies and programmes” deals with “Human rights; freedom of religion; gender equality; culture and development; inclusion of persons with disabilities”. This human rights division covers both bilateral as well as multilateral processes of BMZ, but, with the exception of very few processes, doesn’t lead on any. In other words, it can only contribute to and advise on the work of other divisions, particularly the country divisions and desks in the ministry. To what extent those other desks are receptive to the suggestions of the human rights division, depends on many aspects: the degree to which the leadership of the ministry pursues, or is perceived as pursuing, a human rights agenda, and how its leadership operationalizes this agenda within the ministry and seeks compliance. It also depends on whether human rights are being perceived as furthering or hindering the country desk officers’ agenda, and on their degree of knowledge about human rights and human rights-based approaches, amongst other things. 2 See Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Available at: http://www.bmz.de/en/. 3 Currently division 302, see Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)(2004) Organisational Chart. Available at: http://www.bmz.de/en/ministry/structure/orgplan_en.pdf. Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy | Germany 63
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Katrin Kinzelbach is Associate Dire
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Introduction A sense of historical
Page 14 and 15: Introduction When in 2005 Angela Me
Page 16 and 17: Introduction What do these reflecti
Page 18 and 19: German foreign policy and human rig
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Page 30 and 31: From normalcy to hegemony to impote
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Page 56 and 57: Foreign policy, migration and human
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Page 86 and 87: Shaping the German foreign policy (
Page 96 and 97: The challenging inconsistencies of
Page 110 and 111: References Braun, S. (2015) ‘Mehr
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References Moremi, J. (2015) ‘How
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