Norway's Support for Disability and Development Projects

As one of only a few countries in the world, Norway has committed itself to give priority to disability in its development cooperation. This commitment goes back almost five years and has led to plans and guidelines for how disability issues can be followed up by Norwegian actors in the development field. The big question now is whether all the commitment, all the statements and the documents have actually led to real changes for disabled people in poor countries. I will come back to this, but let us first look at what happened to bring about the shift of focus with regards to disability.

Background

When presenting their proposal for the national budget for 1999, the Norwegian Government stated that greater emphasis would be placed on measures for persons with disabilities. In its budget recommendation, a unanimous Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs stated the following: "The Committee has noted that development assistance for persons with disabilities is to be given priority. The Committee refers in this connection to the need for a coherent and coordinated effort, in which the rights of persons with disabilities are included in both bilateral and multilateral assistance. The Committee stresses the need for guidelines and an overall plan to ensure that development assistance for persons with disabilities is in accordance with sound principles and principles of human rights."

These statements represented an important change with regards to this issue, a change that was largely a result of the lobbying done by Norwegian the Disabled People's Organisations. The DPOs had argued for several years that this issue could not be left to non-governmental organisations alone.

These statements also led to the Norwegian Plan for the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Development Cooperation, prepared by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) and endorsed on the 10 th of November 1999.

Plan developed

This plan is quite brief, but also quite concrete on the follow up of the MFA in its co-operation with multilateral agencies and its humanitarian aid. In addition the plan instructs Norway's development aid agency -NORAD- to "draw up a plan for the operationalisation and use of measures in the efforts to provide bilateral aid to persons with disabilities. The plan will ensure that these efforts are carried out in accordance with sound principles and principles of human rights".

The preparation of NORAD's plan of operationalisation took more than two years, but in March 2002 the document called, "The inclusion of disability in Norwegian development co-operation," was published. The document is divided into two parts. The first part refers to Norwegian policy towards disabled persons, relevant international agreements and conventions etc. In addition there is a discussion on challenges linked to development and disability issues.

The second part contains practical guidelines for how the work can be implemented.

It is worth mentioning that the DPOs in the Atlas Alliance have been involved in the preparation of both the MFA plan and the NORAD guidelines.

Have major changes occurred?

As mentioned above, the big question now is of course whether these tools have led to any major changes in the practical implementation of the Norwegian development support. So far some changes can be seen, but these are mainly linked to the support to multilateral agencies. E.g. Norway has granted a three years disability fund to the World Bank. Norway also supports the UNESCO flagship on inclusive education, and part of the secretariat of this flagship is placed in Oslo. Further the MFA was very instrumental in bringing about the Nordic Conference on Disability in Development, which took place in November 2000.

With regards to the bilateral support the follow up is more difficult to identify. Several parties have been concerned about this, and NORAD has therefore decided to undertake an assessment on what is actually happening with regards to the disability issues within their sphere of responsibility. As far as is known at present, this assessment will be divided into two parts; on the one hand one will try to find out whether the guidelines have been used and found useful, on the other hand one will try to get an overview of whether disability has been mainstreamed into larger programmes supported by Norway.

DPO perspective

From the DPOs perspective, it must be admitted that any big changes within Norwegian bilateral cooperation are not very visible. We hope we are wrong, but so far the most encouraging factor has been the change of attitude shown by some of the important players within this field. The process has made one thing very clear, however, and that is the fact that the DPOs role as watchdogs will be necessary for a long, long time. There is a tendency within development cooperation to think that there are so many good causes and worthwhile target groups, that "we can't reach them all". To us, this is to look at the issue of development from a distorted perspective: it is not a question of dividing the population into different groups and to target first the one, then the next and so on. Rather it is a question of what sort of development we would like to contribute to. If this development aims at a just society with equal rights for all, it will have to recognise the diversity of its population and to aim at an inclusive society without barriers.

The Unique Norwegian Telethon Campaign

Every year a rather unique event takes place in Norway. While the Norwegian Television devotes a whole Sunday afternoon and evening to information about a specific issue and the work of one or more organisations working with this issue, almost every house in the country is visited by people collecting money for the same cause. In this way 4.5 million Norwegians raise approximately 20 million USD during a few hours.

Even in advance of the specific Sunday, there is a lot of information about this year's issue in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television.

To be the receiver of the funds raised through the telethon, the organisations have to apply. Their application will describe the projects that will benefit from the campaign. These projects can be both in Norway or abroad.

The Atlas Alliance was lucky enough to be given the campaign for 2002 and chose as its theme "thesituation of disabled people in developing countries.". Actually it is the third time disabled people's organisations have had the campaign. The first was in 1981 and the second in 1991. In this way the DPOs have been able to raise the funds necessary to meet NORAD's demands for cofunding. Having the campaign in 2002 gave the organisations the opportunity to continue their development support to disabled and people with tuberculosis for another ten years.

Public Education

It also gave the DPOs the opportunity to disseminate a lot of information about disability issues to the Norwegian public. The main messages were that disability is a human rights issue, that disabled belong to the poorest of the poor, and that a lot can be done through changing attitudes and through rather simple measures. Comments in the papers after the campaign showed that the message had got through.

Telethon results

An even more visible proof of this, was the fact that never before have so many people volunteered to collect funds. And never before has so much money been collected by the volunteers knocking at people's doors.

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