Delphine O: Bringing Feminist Diplomacy to the International Stage

In October 2025, you organized the Fourth World Conference on Feminist Foreign Policy in Paris. How do you define feminist diplomacy? And where do we stand today, in your view, in terms of progress and setbacks, with new countries embracing it, others abandoning it, and others in the process of adopting it?

First, a brief historical reminder: feminist diplomacy is a concept introduced by Sweden in 2014. It is a geopolitical concept that, even today, has no concrete expression in an international treaty or convention: there is no international law governing feminist diplomacy. Every country that has adopted such a policy has developed its own definition, including France last year, as part of the international strategy for feminist foreign policy launched on March 8, 2025.

In essence, it means placing gender equality and the rights of women and girls at the heart of a country’s international action, both horizontally and vertically.

Horizontally, this means that women’s rights must be systematically taken into account across all areas of foreign policy: development aid, but also economic diplomacy, peace and security, climate, culture, and digital affairs. Whatever the area of action, a gender perspective must be incorporated, and the impact on women and girls must be assessed.

Vertically, this means that everyone, from the Minister for Foreign Affairs to consulates and embassies, must be committed to this mission. One example is consular diplomacy: ensuring that French women who are victims of domestic violence abroad receive assistance from the government, or that female diplomats posted overseas have access to sexual and reproductive health services, including abortion, if it is not available in the country where they are stationed.

The idea is to adopt a systematic, 360-degree gender perspective across all French activities abroad, assessing gender impacts ex ante rather than simply ex post. When designing an international public policy, such as France’s position in climate negotiations or in a conflict—whether in Ukraine, Gaza, or Sudan—we must always consider the different impacts on women and girls.

As for the current situation, the concept experienced a wave of popularity between 2014 and 2022. It was adopted by countries in the Global North, particularly in Europe and Canada, as well as by a wave of Latin American countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. Since 2022, however, we have seen a reversal, particularly in Europe. Sweden, the first country to adopt feminist foreign policy, abandoned it in 2022, followed by the Netherlands, Germany, and Argentina. In Chile, although there has been no official announcement, the election of a new president suggests that a similar withdrawal may follow.

At the same time, new countries that have not historically been champions of women’s rights are now taking an interest in feminist diplomacy from a geopolitical perspective, amid the reconfiguration of the world order and the weakening of the multilateral system.

I am thinking of Mongolia, Morocco, and Nepal, which joined the Feminist Foreign Policy Plus Group in New York last year. The group now has 20 countries, split equally between the Global North and the Global South. Its members include Morocco, the first Arab-majority-Muslim country on the African continent to join, Liberia, potentially Sri Lanka in the future, and Slovenia.

These countries differ greatly in size, political systems, and geographical regions, but they have all decided that women’s rights are a priority for their foreign policy and a means of making their voices heard on the international stage.

Numerically, the group of countries pursuing feminist diplomacy is actually growing, despite some highly visible withdrawals. Those withdrawing are primarily Northern European countries that had developed an extensive theoretical and operational framework. Meanwhile, those joining are mainly countries from the Global South, representing a wide range of regions, including Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

This challenges the narrative that feminist diplomacy is a Western value imposed on the Global South. In this case, countries in the Global South have independently chosen to adopt the term and develop their own normative frameworks.

Moreover, at the conference last October, we brought together 55 states in Paris for the first time, 27 of which—more than half—were officially represented by countries from the Global South. This was a major success, demonstrating these countries’ geopolitical interest in becoming more involved in defending the rights of women and girls.

As Ambassador and Secretary-General of the Generation Equality Forum, what ambitions did you set at the outset, and why? Looking back, what were its main achievements and limitations?

When this position was created in 2019, my main mission was to organize the Generation Equality Forum, which was initially called the UN’s Fifth World Conference on Women. We had to postpone it because of the pandemic, which created numerous logistical difficulties, but it eventually took place in 2021, co-chaired by France and Mexico under the auspices of UN Women.

This was the first major success: we mobilized $40 billion and established six Action Coalitions, bringing together states, international organizations, civil society, businesses, and philanthropic foundations around a common cause: reinvigorating momentum for gender equality and increasing funding for projects, in a context already marked by a backlash against women’s rights.

A second phase followed, focused on consolidating the achievements and launching French initiatives. These included the Marianne Initiative for Human Rights, in which half of the award recipients each year are women advocating for the rights of women or LGBT people; the Support Fund for Feminist Organizations, which made France the world’s leading donor to feminist organizations in the Global South, providing €250 million over four years to 1,700 organizations in 75 countries; and the Online Women’s Rights Lab, launched in 2024 as the world’s first platform for exchanging knowledge and experience on combating gender-based and sexual cyberviolence.

The next phase involved developing a theoretical framework through the publication, last year, of France’s international strategy for feminist foreign policy. This strategy was the result of more than a year of consultations with numerous government ministries and civil society organizations. It establishes a comprehensive normative framework for feminist foreign policy, covering climate, the economy, LGBT rights, culture, and domestic policy, including promoting women to positions of responsibility and combating pay inequality.

Finally, before I left my position, we held the Ministerial Conference on Feminist Foreign Policy, four years after the Generation Equality Forum. This time, however, the aim was political mobilization to defend the language and principles of feminist diplomacy rather than to raise funds. The conference resulted in a political declaration adopted by 33 countries.

As for the difficulties, we are currently experiencing systematic and coordinated attacks on women’s rights. In diplomatic forums, it is extremely difficult to establish new rights, and even defending rights that have already been acquired has become challenging. We have lost many allies, including majorities that had been secured for ten or twenty years.

The second difficulty concerns budget cuts, which will affect the Support Fund for Feminist Organizations as well as many areas of France’s international action. This is happening in a global context marked by the dismantling of USAID and funding cuts in other European countries.

These two trends will slow the progress we have made, although they will not necessarily bring future efforts to a complete halt—even though I have no longer been in office since January.

In a context of declining funding, what central role do feminist civil society organizations play, and why is it crucial to support them?

They play several roles. First, they work on the ground, in areas where states and international organizations are not directly involved in providing services, such as sexual and reproductive health care, efforts to combat violence, and women’s empowerment cooperatives. They are the actors working closest to women and girls.

They also act as early-warning systems, particularly when it comes to the rise of anti-gender and anti-LGBT rhetoric. Alongside our embassies, they are our first sources of information on the ground. They can see how political campaigns against gender equality are conducted on anti-gender platforms and how funding flows operate. They alert governments and international organizations to these developments.

They are therefore essential, yet historically vulnerable, both because of budget cuts and because of direct attacks by governments seeking to eliminate their rights to assemble, express themselves, and demonstrate.

European governments and countries in the Global South are therefore reflecting on how to rethink these relationships, moving beyond the traditional donor-beneficiary model to build a genuine common cause: defending women’s rights in an increasingly difficult international context.

You have participated in international coalitions on women’s rights, bringing together states with different priorities. What have these experiences taught you about persuading countries to integrate gender equality into their foreign policies?

I do not know whether my powers of persuasion were effective, but I believe that changes in the multilateral system have played a major role.

Historically, many countries relied on the United Nations and philanthropic donors to provide services for women and defend their rights. But with the weakening of the United Nations, and the fact that the world’s leading power has openly adopted anti-gender positions, particularly against sexual and reproductive rights and health, some countries—especially in the Global South—have realized that defending international law, which is under attack today, is also their responsibility.

Without international law and the UN system, which is based on democratic principles, these countries would have no voice in the community of nations, because the international system is increasingly becoming one in which the strongest have the loudest voice.

There is also growing demand from civil society in many countries, despite repression. This is not simply a matter of international legal obligations; it is a social demand. No country can develop without half of its population.

Finally, there is a geopolitical argument. Joining alliances, as countries did at the ministerial conference in October, allows them to position themselves alongside countries such as France or Spain, which will host the next conference, within an international system increasingly governed by power and coalitions.

For countries such as Morocco, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka, joining these groups provides an opportunity to become part of a wider alliance, draw attention to their commitment to women’s rights, and strengthen their regional and international standing.

In the current context, what are the most urgent priorities for feminist diplomacy?

The first issue is budget cuts and how to keep civil society organizations alive so that they can continue providing their services. This is a very real challenge, and I do not yet have an answer.

In terms of specific issues, two major challenges of the 21st century stand out: climate and digital technology.

On climate, the challenge is to understand the intersection between climate justice and women’s rights. Women are currently on the front lines of efforts to combat climate change and implement adaptation and resilience programs.

Then there is the digital sphere, particularly online gender-based violence, which remains largely unaddressed by international law. Awareness is growing, but the issue remains poorly regulated at the national, European, and international levels.

For me, this has become a genuine scourge, almost a pandemic, because it is universal: online violence exists in every country and is subject to very little regulation.

It has a real impact on democracy, as increasing numbers of women withdraw from digital spaces because of cyberbullying. More and more female politicians and journalists are also withdrawing from political and media life.

This has a direct impact on democracy and the rule of law.

Interview conducted by Cristina Asensi-Rodriguez, Communications Assistant Apprentice at the RAJA-Danièle Marcovici Foundation.