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Norway committed USD 3.7 billion to development assistance in 2007, a substantial increase over the previous year. It now gives the world’s highest level of official development assistance as a percentage of gross national income (0.95%). The DAC commends Norway for budgeting to reach its 1% ODA/GNI target in 2009 in a climate of global financial crisis.
Norway is also consistently at the forefront of donor efforts to improve the international aid system, as well as its own development policies and programmes. It supports aid effectiveness and its flexible approach to development assistance enables quick reaction to changing situations and new opportunities. Norway’s development co-operation has innovative practices. For example, it is looking at how Official Development Assistance can be a catalyst for non-ODA contributions to the global challenges of development and poverty reduction.
Despite this progress, Norway still faces some challenges. Although its flexibility is generally considered a strength, Norway needs to guard against adding too many new priorities to an ever-expanding list of initiatives, resulting in the country’s aid being spread thinly across a growing number of countries and activities. Norway should maintain a strategic and focused approach to development assistance. Its newly reorganised aid system fully integrates development and foreign policy within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and makes Norad a technical directorate. This has brought some benefits, such as increased ability to respond to embassy demands. However the new system is not yet fully functional and roles and responsibilities are unclear. Norway aspires to lead on selected cross-cutting issues such as women’s rights, gender equality and the environment but it is still struggling to fully ‘mainstream’ these objectives into programmes and projects.
The DAC conducted its Peer Review of the development co-operation policies and programmes of Norway on 21 October 2008. The discussions were led by the DAC Chair, Eckhard Deutscher. Hakon Guldbrandsen, Secretary of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs headed the Norwegian delegation. The examiners represented Canada and the European Commission. The DAC Main Findings and Recommendations are available on the OECD website at www.oecd.org/dac/peerreviews/norway. For further information journalists are invited to contact Helen Fisher, OECD Media Relations Division (Tel: + 33 (0) 1 45 24 80 97).
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