Villa Kulilds åpningstale på Norad-konferansen 2011

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On behalf of everyone present it is a great pleasure for me to welcome His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon, Her Excellency President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Minister of Finance Emilia Pires, our other distinguished speakers, and all participants, to Norad’s annual conference.

Good morning, my name is Villa Kulild and I am the Director General of Norad.

This year’s topic is aid and conflict. This is an issue of global importance. The populations of conflict-affected and fragile states are often traumatized by war and many live in poverty and misery. In addition, armed conflict creates fertile ground for illegal cross-border activities such as human trafficking, arms smuggling, and drugs trade. The international community must therefore get involved; for humanitarian, foreign policy and security policy reasons.

A significant share of official development assistance is being spent in conflict-affected and fragile states. This was also a key topic at the fourth high level forum on aid effectiveness in Busan. There we discussed how development assistance can be of crucial importance in order to promote peace building and state building.

Today we have gathered a group of highly experienced politicians and academics to share their opinions on how the international community can deliver on this tall agenda.

It is a great privilege for us that one of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Her Excellency President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has taken the time to be with us this morning to share her experiences. The distinguished Norwegian foreign correspondent Bjørn Hansen will join her in a dialogue on lessons learnt from building peace and the way forward. He will also be our moderator for the rest of the day.

Erik Solheim, Minister of the Environment and International Development, sends us his regards from Durban. He will unfortunately not be able to join us today as planned, due to the unforeseen delays in the climate negotiations in Durban.

Your Excellency President Sirleaf and Bjørn, please, the floor is yours.