Minister of International Development Hilde Frafjord Johnson

Speech to the Diplomatic Corps

Parkveien 50, Oslo, 26 November 2001

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished members of the diplomatic corps,

Ladies and gentlemen,

A week ago, when I attended the annual World Bank meetings in Ottawa, I noticed a new attitude. Horst Köhler, Kofi Annan, and Jim Wolfensohn – even Paul O’Neill – the American Treasury Secretary – they were all marked by 11 September. Amidst all the talk of conflict, war and the clash of civilisations - I believe there is another dimension appearing. The global agenda has changed.

Prime Minister Tony Blair put it this way: " If globalisation works only for the benefit of the few, then it will fail and will deserve to fail. But if we follow the principles that have served us so well at home - that power, wealth and opportunity must be in the hands of the many, not the few - if we make that our guiding light for the global economy, then it will be a force for good and an international movement that we should take pride in leading."

We will sign up for that international movement.

Poverty, disease, and environmental degradation are global challenges that require a global response. At the Millennium Summit of last Year we all agreed on the Millennium Declaration as a way of responding to these challenges.

Norway remains strongly committed to the follow-up of the Declaration and plays its full part in the joint efforts of the development community to achieve the ambitious Millennium Development Goals within the 2015 timeframe.

In my mind, the most important of the Millennium Development Goals is the reduction by at least half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in developing countries before 2015. Poverty reduction is a pivotal goal of all Norwegian development efforts.

The Norwegian Action Plan for Poverty Reduction presented by my predecessor will be adjusted and supplemented. It will be an Action Plan for Poverty Eradication. Financial assistance is just one out of many factors. The Action Plan emphasises developing countries’ own responsibility to reduce poverty. Framework conditions like debt and trade are crucial prerequisites for social and economic development. As for our efforts as partners in development, national poverty strategies will be the platform for what we will do from the Norwegian side.

Sustainable poverty reduction also requires that rich countries examine and adjust their policies in all relevant sectors to support rather than impede poor countries’ struggle to escape the poverty trap.

One area which is crucial in this regard - and where we got the first international break-through - is debt relief. Norway was the first country to launch its debt relief strategy last time I was minister. Now it will be extended with two new "windows". For post-conflict countries we are thinking in terms of immediate and short-term debt relief preceding HIPC treatment, under the umbrella of multilateral support schemes. The idea is to help foster economic stabilisation and, thus, help pave the way for HIPC treatment. For middle-income countries we are exploring whether it would be possible to undertake multilaterally co-ordinated debt swaps. The idea is for several creditor countries to join forces and undertake debt-for-development or debt-for nature-swaps under one and the same umbrella arrangement for each debtor country. Both in terms of impact and administrative workload for both debtor and creditor countries, we think this is by far preferable to each and every creditor doing more or less the same thing on a purely bilateral basis. 23 countries have now received extensive debt relief. Still, a lot remains to be done both with the financing and with the flexibility in relation to conditionality. These issues have to be addressed!

Trade is vital. We cannot achieve systematic and sustained poverty reduction without increased economic growth and trade. This government will improve market access for developing countries and in particular the poorest of them. As of July next year all products imported from least developed countries will be given duty free and quota free market access in Norway.

I very much welcome the outcome of the WTO Ministerial and the so-called Doha Development Agenda. This is another international breakthrough! I believe the outcome was important for rebuilding confidence in multilateral trade policy co-operation between developing and developed countries. It is also a good platform for an improved trading system that can facilitate the integration of the poorer trading partners into international trade and multilateral trade rules. But also here we must be aware that the job is far from done. It has just started, and we have to follow it through.

To enable the poorest countries to benefit from new market opportunities, great emphasis will be given to the mainstreaming of trade into the poverty reduction strategies or development plans of our partner countries, as well as to the mainstreaming of trade into our own development policy. We all know that there are no quick fixes here. Poor countries need assistance on the productive side, the supply side of the chain to be able to utilise market opportunities. Here, we have to do a much greater job. We need trade and aid to achieve it.

The Indian scientist and winner of the 1998 Nobel price in economics, Dr. Amartya Sen, has stated that development must be about expanding peoples’ freedoms. The freedom to live a life that each and every one of us has reason to value. This corresponds very much with UNDP’s definition – development as policies that expand people’s choices. Then the question becomes what kinds of policies and interventions can contribute in this regard?

Obviously, we need to create access to basic education and health services for all, not least girls and women.

We must ensure the freedom of democratic participation for all citizens to engage in open, public debate without fear of any kind of retribution.

And finally, we need to ensure the possibility of all citizens to act as economic actors: to own, buy and sell assets.

This is related to freedoms – but not least to rights. The right to education and health services, to participation and to access to markets. A rights-based approach to development will be an essential part of our Poverty Eradication Plan.

One of the achievements for which I got national and international recognition in my time as Minister of Development and Human Rights in the former Bondevik government was the extensive Plan of Action for Human Rights. Norway is still among the very few countries to have presented a plan of this nature and with parliamentary approval. It adopts a coherent approach comprising both national and international measures to strengthen human rights and is addressing both political and civil rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights. The need to focus on some of these fundamental rights and freedoms are not least important in the times we are now going through.

In our present government human rights will be based on the principle that each cabinet minister is responsible for these issues in his or her field. Within this general framework, however, I will co-ordinate the follow-up of the Action Plan. Focusing on our national responsibilities is important - not because Norway has such a bad human rights record, but because credibility always starts at home. To voice your concerns you have to keep your house in order.

National responsibilities are essential also in a development context. As rich countries we are committed to partnership and assistance, but we cannot do the job.

We are therefore pleased to see that several of our partner countries have put combating corruption on their political agendas. Administrative reform aimed at achieving greater transparency and accountability is imperative. Independent controlling bodies are also essential if corruption is to be reduced. Democracy-building and independent media should be part and parcel of such a policy.

On our side, we need to concentrate efforts better. The geographic concentration has been steadily reduced over the last years. This has implications for aid effectiveness and not least for poverty reduction. We need to concentrate our resources on the poorest.

We have identified seven main partner countries, which we have submitted for parliamentary approval - Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Bangladesh and Nepal. None of these are new acquaintances. They are all classified as Least Developed Countries - LDCs. In addition we have limited the number of other partner countries to 17; of which I know many are represented here. So are most of our "allies in development", both likeminded groups as the Nordics and the Utstein Group and others.

As you all know the United Nations represents a cornerstone of Norwegian development policy - as well as of Norwegian foreign policy. This government is determined to continue Norway’s longstanding support to the UN. This implies not the least efforts of the UN to ensure economic and social development in the developing countries. The post-September 11 ^th> situation clearly accentuates the importance of the UN in dealing with the global challenges facing us.

There are three major events under the UN umbrella next year: the Conference on Financing for Development, on how to reach the Millennium Development Goals, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10), and the UN Special Session on Children, which was postponed due to the events of this fall. Each of these events provides an opportunity to determine our common future.

We are at a crossroads. If one conference fails in delivering on the commitments, we may see repercussions influencing the others. What we have seen on debt relief and in Doha should, however, give reason for optimism. It is mainly up to us, as rich countries, to show that we will stand by our commitments and deliver on them. We have been able to do so several times now.

I can assure you that we from the Norwegian side will do our utmost to do so now, too. We will put results for the poor first.

Thank you all very much for your attention.

I look forward to working with you all. Thank you for coming.