40th anniversary of Norwegian–Vietnamese relations

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Mr Ambassador, 
Distinguished participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen

It is a great joy and privilege for me to be here today as the representative of the Norwegian Government to open this Symposium to mark 40 years of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Norway.

This is the first time I visit Vietnam. There is great geographical distance between our countries. However, the ties between our peoples remain close. Today, there are around 20000 people of Vietnamese origin in Norway. The total Norwegian population is only around 5 million, and this group is one of the largest non-European groups in Norway, contributing greatly to Norwegian society.

In Norway, there is a rapidly growing interest and recognition of the impact of the South-East Asian emerging economies on the global markets.  I am very impressed by the results that have been achieved by Vietnam within the last decade with regard to poverty reduction and economic growth, not to forget during the last couple of years after the onset of the global economic crisis. Our own experience, as an open and export oriented economy, has shown us how important it is to facilitate trade and investments so as to reduce as much as possible the long term effects and negative impacts of the crisis.  

The current cooperation between our two countries is based on the Vietnam Strategy from 2008. There are four priority areas in this strategy:

1. expanded economic cooperation, 
2. strengthened cooperation on democracy and human rights
3. greater emphasis on technical cooperation and capacity building, and
4. increased cooperation on international issues. 

Our aim for each of these four pillars is to focus on issues where our two countries may mutually benefit from further interaction and cooperation. We are currently working together in the fields of environment, climate, and sustainable development, and efforts to strengthen human rights – among others through our human rights dialogue since 2003.

We want to strengthen our cooperation with Vietnam in order to contribute to building a world community firmly rooted in the UN. We believe this may create a long term win-win-situation with regard to our common challenges and concerns, also in those areas where our views and opinions and national practices may differ. Vietnam has a key role to play being a pilot-country of both One UN and UN-REDD. We expect to continue our dialogue and cooperation on these issues in the years to come.

Food security is at the heart of my political interest. Global population is forecast to increase to around 9 billion people in 2050. We need to produce more food to feed this growing population and we need to improve policies to ensure that food is available to all groups. Climate change is one of the greatest threats to food security. We would dramatically neglect our responsibility if we did not place combating climate change on the very top of our agenda for future food security. This is central also to your efforts to prevent and mitigate consequences of climate change, as I understand that Vietnam has come to play a central role in regional food security.

Private sector cooperation is a key area in Norway’s bilateral cooperation with Vietnam. Oil and gas, the maritime sector (including shipbuilding and shipping), fisheries, aquaculture, telecommunications and trade in consumer goods are important sectors for Norwegian business activities in Vietnam. The number of Norwegian companies with operations in Vietnam is increasing, and several Norwegian-Vietnamese business partnerships have been established, particularly in the maritime sector. Clean energy (hydropower) is also an important sector for future Norwegian investment in Viet Nam.

We also expect our Norwegian companies that are doing business in Vietnam to live up to the same values and standards that are common place in Norway. I believe that companies no longer have any excuse for not paying attention to human rights, safeguarding the environment or respecting core standards of decent work – to mention some key dimensions. The issue at stake is not whether companies have a responsibility or not. It is how they best can implement good practices, and how far the responsibility of a company should extend.

Dialogue on the political level is important. It is equally important that development actors – like NGOs and the UN - who are on the ground with firsthand experience inform and push the agenda further. We also believe that cooperation on specific areas between Vietnam and Norway is more efficient when our broader relations are well-established and firm.  We believe it is important to increase Norway’s points of contact with the Vietnamese society. People-to-people contact and cultural cooperation are important ways of achieving this; so too are efforts to increase cooperation between Norwegian and Vietnamese institutions and groups in a number of other areas.  We very much welcome the reopening last year of a Vietnamese embassy in Oslo, which we see as a confirmation of our mutual interest in this regard. 

On this note I leave the floor to the varied list of speakers to present the different sides to our cooperation. I look forward to your presentations and wish you a successful symposium.

Thank you!