The task of the Development Policy Forum is to make knowledge and experience from all over the world available for specific application in German development policy. In the last twenty years, the EF has built up a network of competent and influential specialists and thus acquired a sound reputation as a promoter of dialogue on strategic and practical development policy issues. The events organized by the Forum enable participants to openly approach and learn from one another without the pressure of taking immediate decisions and free from political and protocol constraints. These events have made it possible to mitigate controversies, reduce tension and build confidence - especially in the periods before and after controversial world conferences or international negotiations. They have also created a basis for cooperation so that different actors can combine their competence and make joint efforts to achieve a goal.

Participants include members of parliament, decision makers from government agencies, top-level staff from industry and science and leading personalities from public life in North and South. An increasing number of decision makers from industrial companies and economic associations are to be found among them, including persons from new partner countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. By combining experience-based knowledge with research findings and policy with practice, the participants gain new insights, and forward-looking action strategies for German development cooperation can be designed.

The positive reactions show that exchange of ideas and dialogue will continue to gain importance in the future. The subjects dealt with by the Forum are oriented to the developmental priorities defined by Parliament, the Federal Government and individual Federal ministries. The subjects for discussion put on the agenda by the Forum since its inception reflect the central issues of development cooperation in national and international areas. In the first half of the 1980s attention was devoted to development strategies, economic cooperation and socio-cultural relations. In the second half of the 1980s growing awareness of environmental issues led to cooperation with the Club of Rome and the Brundtland Commission for ecological questions. Activities in the area of North-South cooperation, which the EF had supported from the beginning together with the Brandt Commission, were followed by conferences to intensify South-South regional cooperation. Since 1990, the Forum has been actively involved in the evolution of UN and world conferences and summits and has organized preparatory informal rounds of talks for them, e.g. the International Conference on Population (1994), the World Summit for Social Development (1995) and HABITAT II (1996). 

New accents were set in the 1990s because several problems called for development strategies extending beyond individual sectors, e.g. the developments after the end of the East-West conflict, the population growth, numerous regional military conflicts, the growing environmental pollution, and the world-wide deterioration of general economic conditions. In addition to this, given numerous ethnic conflicts and regional tensions, development cooperation became more concerned with humanitarian emergency aid, crisis prevention and demobilization, and thus became a factor in peace and security policy. In the interest of sustainable development, the Forum put the focus on issues such as social policy, rule of law, human rights, participation, and the economic potential of women. Up to the turn of the century the EF will address subjects which have remained highly topical up to the present, e.g. partnership between the public and private sectors, peace and human rights policy, economic policy, the role of the state, and knowledge and communication as factors of development.