Norway

Country Profile

The current Norwegian government is a strong and committed advocate for women’s and children’s health, gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It has also committed to be particularly vocal about controversial issues such as abortion and LGBT rights, and works to gain recognition for the term ‘sexual rights’.

The Government

The Norwegian ‘red/green’ coalition government is headed by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Labour Party). The government consist of three parties, the Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party, and has held the majority in the Parliament (Stortinget) since 2005. The Labour Party is the largest party in the coalition. To work to improve women’s and children’s health is one of the main targets in the government’s stated objectives for its international development cooperation in the inaugural declarations from 2005 and 2009.

The Millennium Development Goals and the Global Strategy for the Health MDGs

The Millennium Development Goals and the fight to reduce poverty form the foundation for the current Norwegian government’s development cooperation. Thus, the MDG framework also lays the foundation for the government’s policies for health in development cooperation, which is heavily geared toward MDGs 4, 5 and 6.

The Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, has been a strong advocate for increased political support and funding for the health MDGs, and in 2007 he launched the ‘Global Campaign for the Health MDGs’. ‘The Global Campaign’ joined the ‘Every Woman, Every Child’ initiative and the ‘Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health’ when it was launched by the UN Secretary General in 2010. ‘The Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health’ is currently regarded a top priority for the Norwegian government when it comes to international health initiatives, and will guide its priorities towards 2015 (Source: Norad).

Gender Equality and SRHR

Work on gender equality is a high priority for the government both domestically and internationally. Gender equality is not only regarded as an aim in itself, but also as a means to achieve poverty alleviation. It is also seen as a field in which Norway holds a comparative advantage, given the high degree of gender equality within Norway.

In the ‘Action Plan for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality in Development Cooperation’ (2007–2013), sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is listed as one of four prioritized areas within the work on gender equality. The three others are economic and political participation and violence against women. It is stated that “Norway will be a fearless champion for sexual and reproductive health and rights” (2007: 7). Women’s right to control their own bodies, freedom from violence and abuse, the right to sexual education, teenagers’ and adult’s right to contraception and the right to abortion on demand are listed as important themes for the Norwegian government. It is also stated that it will “(…) also fight all forms of discrimination and stigmatisation on the grounds of sexual orientation” (2007:7).

Funding

Norwegian ODA is still over 1% of GNP. Support for refugee-related activities within Norway is included in this 1% (according to the OECD DAC guidelines).

Most of the Norwegian health ODA is channelled through multilateral organisations (WHO, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF) and global health funds and mechanisms such as GAVI and the Global Fund.

It is an objective for Norwegian health ODA to contribute to a better collaboration between the UN system, the World Bank and the regional development banks and global funds and mechanisms within the health sector to speed up and increase the ability of achieving results at country level (Source: Norad).

Norway is a big contributor when it comes to core funding, both to multilaterals and (I)NGOs.

Climate change and clean energy are highlighted as the topics which will be prioritised with new funding within ODA in the national budget for 2012.

Funding to Reproductive Health (RH) and Family Planning (FP)

In 2009, 0.4% of Norwegian ODA went to RH, while 0.002% went to FP. In 2010, 0.3% of Norwegian ODA went to RH and 0.0023% to FP (Source: Norad).

Both the relative and the absolute amount spent on Population Policies/Programmes and Reproductive Health went down from 2009 to 2010 – from NOK463.5 million (representing 19.2% of the total amount spent on Health and Social Services in Norwegian ODA, and 1.8% of total ODA) to NOK374.3 million (representing 18.9% of the total spent on Health and Social Services, and 1.4 % of total ODA).