Germany’s Sustainable Development Strategy states that up to 2030 “even greater efforts than before will be required to reach all disadvantaged people and populations and to counteract rising inequality.”
For Germany the focus on leaving no one behind is an opportunity for rights-based approaches to development; to invest in poverty reduction, inclusive growth and social cohesion; and to recognise that the most deprived people need to make faster progress to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. It considers that official development assistance has a comparative advantage in least developed and low-income countries which have less access to other resources and in targeting the furthest behind in ways that other sources of finance, which need a financial return, cannot.
The Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ) is developing a conceptual framework on inequality reduction which will take into account the principle to leave no one behind. BMZ and GIZ use indicators and assessment tools to set priorities, identify needs, target groups and track progress such as political economy analysis, governance, and human rights risk assessments and gender analysis. Low quality information and data gaps on who is left behind, where and why weakens the evidence base for programming. Other challenges include handling the potentially higher cost of reaching poor and vulnerable people in remote, hard-to-access areas, and political and cultural disincentives to include all groups in development.
