Interview with Michele Diekmann
”As KfW Development Bank we can only benefit from inclusion”In an interview with Friederike Bauer, KfW Director Michele Diekmann explains why inclusion is important for development and how important the topic is to KfW Development Bank itself.
Published in March 2025
The summit is taking place in Berlin and is being organised by Germany together with Jordan and the International Disability Alliance. This high-level event is a good opportunity to highlight the topic of inclusion, to give it political attention and to emphasise its relevance for German development cooperation. Representatives from the Global North, the Global South and a broad spectrum of civil society organisations will be present to jointly promote the topic.
In my view, inclusion is a cross-cutting issue and very relevant for reaching a large number of SDGs, as it addresses overcoming barriers and supports more people to participate in political, economic and social life. The overall SDG motto ‘Leave no one behind’ is relevant for people with disabilities, of whom there are an estimated 1.3 billion worldwide, roughly 16 per cent of the world’s population. Ignoring them would mean not taking the SDGs seriously. Their participation can make a significant contribution to achieving the SDGs.
Inclusion is part of the of human rights concept. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights proclaims a life free of discrimination for all. The prohibition of discrimination in the concept, which dates back to 1949, was later supplemented by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which came into force in 2008. The aim of the convention is to explicitly establish equal rights for people with disabilities and thus give them access to guaranteed rights. Germany ratified the Convention in 2009 and has since concretised its provisions in various laws.
The key outcome will be a Berlin-Amman Declaration in which the participating countries commit to further promoting inclusion. The donor countries from the North also want to agree to earmark 15% of their joint development funds for inclusion in the future. For the first time, a concrete goal is defined; this is new.
The details still need to be sorted out and depend on how the German government envisages the implementation. But it is clear that the 15% target will lead to concrete progress in working towards this goal.
We as KfW Development Bank will confirm our commitment to inclusion, both in our portfolio and as an institution. In addition, a memorandum of understanding between the BMZ and Jordan for debt swap will be signed in Berlin. It is planned to use part of the funds for investments in the Jordanian education sector, which is still subject to final approval by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Due to various obstacles, only around 8 per cent of children with disabilities currently attend public schools there. The funds are to be used to remove barriers - including physical ones - in order to increase this rate.
In the beginning of 2024, a marker was introduced that we can use to measure which projects address inclusion issues. It is important that the issue of inclusion is systematically taken into account when planning and preparing our projects.
Inclusion aspects are certainly easier to incorporate in projects that are close to the target group, for example in the areas of education or health, than in large-scale infrastructure such as a sewage treatment plant or new power lines. However, inclusion can also play an important role in infrastructure, e.g. in the mobility sector when financing barrier-free suburban trains or buses.
We have managed to make significant progress in this area in recent years; among other things, an Inclusion Task Team supported by the Executive Board was founded, which has managed to achieve a great deal. The proportion of employees with disabilities at KfW Development Bank has increased significantly from 2.9% in 2022 to 5% at the end of 2024. As a development bank, we can only benefit from diverse teams with as many perspectives, experiences and competences as possible.
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