Country Profiles
Germany
Context
The leadership of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) continues to support sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as well as family planning (FP).
The coalition government of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) has been in power since December 2021. For the first-time, the three-party coalition agreement mentions support to SRHR of women and girls in development cooperation. Social Democrat Svenja Schulze took over as head of BMZ and announced that she would pursue a feminist development policy. The policy was launched in March 2023 together with the Feminist Foreign Policy of the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO). In addition, BMZ developed the core theme strategy of health, social protection and population policy, an Africa Strategy and a Gender Action Plan. SRHR is included as a priority in those strategies.
Policies & funding
Total funding for sexual and reproductive health and family planning (SRH/FP) from Germany in 2022 was 103 million Euros, increasing from over 96 million in 2021. This surge followed a significant curtailment in 2021, given BMZ’s decelerated response to the COVID-19 pandemic. If funding to HIV prevention and control is considered, Germany spent in total around 475 million Euros in 2022 and 490 million in 2021 to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM). With disbursements of almost 347 million Euros in total, Germany sustained support (+3%) to the broader SRHR agenda. This development is linked to the new feminist development policy, which reinforces SRHR is on the BMZ agenda. Despite the irregular and conflictive budget process in 2023, which entails considerable cuts to the 2024 budget of several departments including BMZ the budget draft envisages increases in funding for IPPF from 15.5 to 20 million Euros and UNFPA from 47.5 to 50 million Euros in 2024.
As the German Parliament will only decide on the 2024 budget in February 2024 projections on SRHR funding cannot be made with certainty at the time of writing. But given the budget cuts, decreased bilateral funding to SRHR is expected.
At the Nairobi Summit in 2019, the German government pledged 100 million Euros annually in bilateral funding for the BMZ Initiative on Rights-based Family Planning and Maternal Health until 2023. The initiative has three thematic goals: (1) improving knowledge on and acceptance of modern family planning methods; (2) expanding access to modern family planning methods and services; and (3) increasing the number of births attended by health professionals. The initiative has been extended to 2025, but the financial details remain unclear.
These funds are however not accounted for in the above-mentioned findings of financial spending in 2022, as data is not available at the time of writing. Should government-to-government contributions be considered for 2022, in addition to other substantial disbursements to development bank KfW, the German service provider of international cooperation GIZ, and NGO projects focused on SRHR, FP as well as HIV, German disbursements to both SRH/FP and SRHR would have significantly increased that year. It is however possible to confirm that, as part of the BMZ-Initiative, approximately 95 million Euros had been committed for 2022. In the past, Germany disbursed an average of 100 million Euros per year under the BMZ-Initiative.
“Population Policy and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights” have been anchored as a field of action in the BMZ’s core theme.. As a result, BMZ Department “Social security and population policy” was renamed to “Social Protection, Sexual, Reproductive Health, and Rights”. A new strategy for the core theme “Health, social security and population policy” was published in 2023. Within this document, SRHR is prominently featured.
Internationally vocal
Germany has become a reliable supporter of SRH/FP and SRHR for all in the international arena. During the Nairobi Summit in 2019, Germany further demonstrated its political and financial commitment to achieving SRHR for all. As part of the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2020 and within the framework of the Generation Equality Forum, Germany co-led the Global Action Coalition on Economic Justice and Rights. This is a five-year commitment to help accelerate progress on gender equality. Germany is also engaged on SRHR at the EU level: in 2021, Germany joined the Team Europe Initiative focusing on SRHR in sub-Saharan Africa.
During its G7 Presidency in 2022, Germany, together with its G7 partners, reaffirmed its commitment to achieving comprehensive SRHR for all and recognised the essential and transformative role of SRHR for gender equality. It also mentions the empowerment of women and girls through a feminist development, foreign and trade policy. In the Hiroshima Leaders’ Statement of 2023, the G7 reaffirmed their commitment to promoting SRHR and specifically mentioned Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in its Statement.
Key documents
- Country factsheet 2022-2023-Germany.pdf
- BMZ Feminist Development Policy (2023)
- GFFO Foreign Feminist Policy (2023)
- BMZ Core Theme Strategy Health, Social Security and Population Policy (2023 in German)
- BMZ Priorities – A World in Transition (2023)
- Here you can find Germany’s commitments during the Nairobi Summit (2019)
- Here you can find more information on Germany’s engagement in the SRHR area (2023)
- BMZ Initiative – Strengthening of SRHR (in German)
- G7 Leaders‘ Communiqué (2022)
- G7 Hiroshima Leaders‘ Communiqué (2023)
- Shaping the future with Africa – the Africa Strategy of the BMZ (2023)
- Gender Action Plan (2023, German)