Glossary
Results 1 to 10 of 69
A
- Ableism
Ableism is prejudice and/or discrimination against people with disabilities. It can take a variety of forms: ableism may mean that people with disabilities are defined solely by their physical or cognitive abilities; it may specifically emphasise the person’s potential “despite” their disability; it may ignore specific needs; or it may convey a sense of superiority on the part of the non-disabled.
- Agenda 2030
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted at a UN Summit in New York on 25 September 2015. With the Agenda, the international community recognises that complex global challenges can only be resolved through collaboration and that all states must make their contribution to this process. With the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which form part of the Agenda, the international community has set itself objectives for achieving decent lives for all the world’s people while preserving natural resources for the long term. Agenda 2030 calls on all countries to act in an environmentally compatible, socially just and economically efficient manner.
- Agents of Change
Agents of Change promote and enable constructive transformation processes. They perform a particularly valuable role in conflict and crisis settings, where they can facilitate decision-making.
- AIDS
The term acquired immunodeficiency syndrome describes the collection of symptoms and infections associated with acquired deficiency of the immune system. Infection with HIV has been established as the underlying cause of AIDS.
- Anti-gender movement
The transnational anti-gender movement has grown particularly over the last decade and is hostile to what it refers to as “gender ideology”; it targets the rights of women and LGBTQI+ persons, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and civil society organisations that are active in this field. The movement consists of various state and non-state actors, most of them right-wing, right-wing populist or Christian fundamentalist. As an example of their activity, they lobby at EU and UN level against the embedding of an inclusive understanding of gender in official texts.
- Anti-racism
An anti-racist position means actively standing against all forms of racism and opposing racist structures, behaviour and attitudes in all their forms.
B
- Binarism
In a general sense, binarism refers to a duality: a binary system classifies two components as a pair of opposites. The gender binary system which prevails worldwide differentiates between men and women. Trans or intersex persons are regarded as a deviation from the norm. With the gender binary system, a power relationship is constructed between the sexes within society and specific roles and capabilities are associated with being a man or being a woman.
- Black
Black is often used as a self-descriptor by people of African origin, the African diaspora and the anti-racism movement. The word Black is capitalised intentionally in order to signal that it does not refer to skin colour or a biological characteristic but to the lived experience of racism in a predominantly white society (see Glossary entry: White). Another example of a self-descriptor is Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC), which in Germany is used by persons who are read as Asian, Arab or Turkish, as well as by Roma.
- BMZ
Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development
C
- Care work
Care work may be paid or unpaid. It refers to the provision of care and support to people, including children and other persons, as well as housework and voluntary community work in a private context (e.g. families) or in the public care sector (e.g. health professionals). Data from 2020 show that as a global average, around 75 per cent of unpaid care work is performed by women.