Press conference by NORWAY’S MINISTER OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Reaching the Millennium Development Goals would require the kind of reforms her country was instituting with its approach to the peace process in the Sudan, Norway’s Minister of International Development said this afternoon at a Headquarters press conference.

Presenting a progress report on building partnerships for development, the eighth Millennium Development Goal, Hilde Frafjord told correspondents that was the area in which the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) could be most effective in its contribution to reducing poverty and achieving the other development Goals.  Her country’s report outlined the progress and challenges being faced with regard to each:  eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; and ensuring environmental sustainability.

She said Norway, along with like-minded others such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, as well as the European Union as a whole, were reporting on activities for two reasons, she said.  First, it was not fair that only developing countries should report on what they were doing to advance the goals set out for development in the Millennium Plan.  Rich countries should report and a checklist had been prepared to measure both progress and challenges in areas such as debt relief, trade, opening market access to developing countries, and improving the level and quality of aid being delivered.  Policies were being examined on how developed countries dealt with the developing and how coherent their policies were.

She said three policy areas were foremost in Norway’s partnership undertaking:  developing ethical guidelines for the Norwegian petroleum fund to screen out Norway’s involvement with unethical or illegal business enterprises; studying how Norway could deal with the money laundering that hampered development; and what actions could be undertaken to preserve the environment. 

Second, she said Norway was reporting on its activities and its challenges as part of its contention that serious donor and aid reform was necessary in order to achieve the Millennium Goals.  Too much aid was being wasted with administrative overhead, duplication of efforts and competition.  Donors would have to reform, whether they were partners, international monetary institutions or the United Nations.  The reform would have to take place along two guiding principles:  how donors could adapt to country needs; and how the most could be made of every dollar.

With regard to the Sudan peace process, she recalled that she was actively involved and had been present in Nairobi two weeks ago when Sudanese officials sat together to launch what was hopefully the final round of the peace process.  Six protocols had already been negotiated and signed for a national solution in the Sudan, including Darfur.  Two annexes remained to be signed and they concerned implementation, one on the ceasefire modalities for the southern army and the other on implementing the six protocols.  Three working groups were negotiating on the technical level.  Negotiations were expected to start again on 16 November due to Ramadan.

She hoped a full peace agreement would be achieved by the end of the year and that would have a major effect for the Darfur situation.  That, too, would be achieved through the north-south process, possibly with prospects for a national solution that would include autonomy for Darfur.

Was she optimistic about Darfur? a correspondent asked.  She replied that it wasn’t wise to talk about optimism.  Some processes didn’t look promising.  In Darfur, the solution to the situation would come through a national solution, where there would be a coalition government in Khartoum, consisting of all the political forces.  It would be a change of government that had already been agreed to in the political protocol.  The question was how to apply it to Darfur.  The answer was to complete the peace process in Nairobi, then implement the agreement.  Nearly all the issues, such as power-sharing, wealth-sharing, decentralizing, autonomy and respect for human rights, were agreed to already in the protocols.  They must be applied to Darfur.

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