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Message from the Chairman
of the Supervisory Board
Through the special initiative ‘Stability and development in the MENA region’, we are help-
ing stabilise the situation and making our contribution toward building peace in the Middle
East and North Africa, where the upheavals that followed the Arab Spring have led to politi-
cal instability and violent conflicts. We have so far provided EUR 205 million, primarily to
promote job creation measures and thus integrate young people in particular into the labour
market. Our projects are also strengthening state structures and civil society so that the
region can achieve a new level of stability.
In 2015 we now have the chance to put the world on track for comprehensive sustainable
development, with new sustainable development goals and a new climate agreement.
The post-2015 development agenda is to be adopted by the heads of state and government
at a special UN summit in September 2015. The new goals will be universally valid, i.e. they
will apply for all countries. A new global partnership will be needed in order to master this
major challenge. At the end of 2014, Federal Development Minister Gerd Müller presented
Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Charter for the Future ‘One World – Our Responsibility’.
This document paves the way for the realisation of these goals across Germany and lays out
recommendations for specific action – at political and economic level, but also in the every-
day lives of individuals.
2015, the year of Germany’s G7 Presidency, will also be a crucially important year for
climate action. At the end of the year, a binding new climate agreement is to be adopted at
the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. This is a matter of the utmost importance for
us. BMZ is to put up an expected EUR 1.6 billion to finance climate protection activities.
Last year the German Government pledged EUR 750 million for the Green Climate Fund.
The decision to set up the Fund was taken at the UN Climate Change Conference in
Mexico in 2010. Its task is to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation measures
in developing countries and emerging economies as of this year.
Germany has steadily increased its contribution to international cooperation in recent years.
BMZ’s 2015 budget is about EUR 6.5 billion – an all-time high. This is an excellent financial
basis on which to work, but we can only achieve lasting positive results if we also have the
necessary expertise and experience as well as huge personal commitment and dedication.
These are areas in which GIZ enjoys an excellent reputation at international level, a fact of
which I as Chairman of the Supervisory Board am particularly proud. GIZ is synonymous
with German development cooperation at its best. I would like to express my thanks to the
Management Board and all GIZ employees, many of whom work under extremely difficult
conditions. I would like them to know how much I appreciate their work. They have allowed
us to achieve some of our goals already, and to come closer to achieving many more.
Dr Friedrich Kitschelt
Chairman of the GIZ Supervisory Board
State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
People are always at the heart of international cooperation. Our mandate is to improve their
living conditions. This is why we set ourselves ambitious targets. We are absolutely convinced
that we can banish hunger, that we can achieve stability and development in North Africa
and the Middle East, that a more peaceful world is possible, and that we can therefore tackle
the factors that cause people to flee their homes.
This is why we, at BMZ, launched three special initiatives in these areas in 2014. They
demonstrate what we mean when we talk about ‘accepting responsibility’. Through the
special initiative ‘One World – No Hunger’ we are investing EUR 625 million to achieve
food and nutrition security for this generation and the generations to come. With the
support of GIZ, we are promoting urgently needed innovations in the agricultural and food
sectors, as well as pushing ahead with environmentally and socially sound structural trans-
formation in rural areas. We believe that the way forward is to develop effective small family
farms, to promote women specifically, and to ensure that adequate and affordable food is
available to even the weakest members of society, especially young children and pregnant
women.
We have made available a sum of EUR 330 million for the special initiative ‘Fighting the
causes of refugee movements, reintegrating refugees’ in fiscal 2014 and 2015. Our primary
concern is to fight the root causes of refugee movements, to stabilise the situation in the host
regions, and to integrate and reintegrate refugees and internally displaced persons. We aim
to help refugees create new prospects for themselves by taking charge of their own lives.
At the same time, we aim to support host regions by putting in place and maintaining the
necessary infrastructure.
Dr Friedrich Kitschelt
GIZ Integrated Company Report 2014
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Message from the Chairman of the Supervisory Board