Minister of Development Cooperation Kari Nordheim-Larsen

Opening remarks

Human Development Workshop on the Human Development Report 1995, Oslo 15 - 16 August 1995

Dr. Ul Haq, international as well as national participants,

I am very happy to welcome you all to this Oslo workshop preceding the launch of this years Human Development Report.
The launch of the Human Development Report is an important event and I am pleased and honoured that UNDP this year decided to do it in Norway.

I am particularly pleased to present the Norwegian edition of the Human Development Report for the first time. I think this makes it the 11th language version. It is my hope that the Norwegian report will help broaden the interest here in Norway for development issues.

Dr. Ul Haq will introduce the key messages in the report. I will therefore limit myself to a few brief comments on the report as well as on the forthcoming Beijing Conference on Woman.

I believe this year's Human Development Report will be a very useful reference document in Beijing and beyond. I am particularly impressed with the wealth of statistical information.
To measure the gender inequalities world-wide is truly an innovation!

In my opinion, the report illustrates that there can be no sustainable development without improving the opportunities of women - especially in private enterprises, and through education and health services.As Gro Harlem Bruntland states in her special contribution to the report: We must feminize the development policies!

An important lesson from this year's report is that public action and political commitment are needed to facilitate the full participation of women. We know this from our own country. The same is true in the international context.

A few months ago, I introduced the world launch of the World Bank special study on gender and development . I think it is striking how similar the policy messages of the World Bank and the UN programmes have become. The World Bank highlights the need for the same policy lessons I just mentioned - that is: Investment in women is the best development strategy - and state interventions for gender equality is necessary.

I believe these corresponding views is a good sign. It gives me hope that we at the Beijing conference will be able to take important steps forward.

As you are all aware, Norway has been a long-time supporter of the United Nations development system. We contribute, for instance, eight percent of our total development resources to UNDP. UNDP is a vital tool in multilateral development assistance and will in my view be even more important in the years to come. I fully share the view of the Administrator of UNDP Mr. Speth, saying that UNDP is on an important journey to reinvent itself and to strengthen the UN system's capacity to deliver more effective and efficient technical and other forms of assistance to the developing world. The recent decisions i The Executive Board changing the planning system and focusing even more on the poorest countries are steps in the right direction.It is no secret that Norway was one of the strongest advocates behind this important reform.Increased UN inter -agency cooperation and co-ordination is however equally important in achieving the goals of a sustainable human development.

Improving women's situation has been an important objective of Norwegian development assistance for the last 20 years. Ten years have passed since the last World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985.Many experiences have been gained on development cooperation in general and on WID assistance in particular. Not everything has worked out to our satisfaction, but we are in a continuos process where the challenge is to search for better solutions and means to achieve our objectives.

Based on these experiences, policies and approaches for development cooperation in general and for WID assistance in particular are now being adjusted. The efforts to integrate even more a gender perspective in Norwegian bilateral and multilateral development assistance will be an area of high priority in the years to come, and will be an important part of our follow-up to the Beijing Conference.

In our multilateral development cooperation, Norway has emphasised the need to establish institutional mechanisms in the multilateral agencies in order to promote the integration of a gender perspective in the policy and operational activities of these institutions. The Norwegian political and financial support to the establishment of WID contacts and advisors for this purpose, have in many cases been decisive.
Bilaterally we are involved with all our partners in efforts of mainstreaming the gender perspective in all areas where we are focusing on the human development perspective. It is sometimes a slow process - but there are progress in many of these countries.

1995 represents a milestone enhancing the international focus on the situation of women.
The Beijing Conference has led to tremendous activity all over the world, for several years actually, to prepare for the final event and secure a successful result: a Platform for Action that represents important steps forward in the work for gender equality and empowerment of women.

The Beijing Conference naturally follows a number of other international conferences that have put a clear focus on the role of women in the development process. The international conferences in Vienna, Cairo and Copenhagen were all path-setting with regard to issues like women's human rights, the importance of investing in women's health and education and the need to enhance women's participation in political and economic life.

There have been indications that some forces would want to turn the tide with regard to the achievements reached at those conferences. This is of course not acceptable, and I am confident that we will be able to prevent such set-backs. We must make sure the Beijing conference builds upon the results of these former events and takes further steps ahead towards gender equality on a global basis.

One of the main challenges of the conference is how to deal with the fact that a growing proportion of the world's poor are women and girls. This 'feminization of poverty', as it is called, needs to be addressed in several ways.
It has become generally accepted that investing in women, especially through improving their access to health care and education, is the key to both social and economic development and hence a prerequisite to halt this negative trend. An additional insight from the Cairo conference was that providing women with such services, not least those related to women's reproductive role, is crucial if we want to reduce the growth of the world's population.

We need to make sure that this insight leads to action in the follow-up of the conference. I believe that one way of securing this is to follow up the so-called 20/20 principle adopted by the Social Summit in March this year. As you know, this principle calls on donor and recipient countries to allocate an average of 20 per cent of their aid or national budgets to basic social programmes. Norway will make all efforts to make sure this principle is reiterated in Beijing, with an emphasis on the need to implement it with a gender perspective in mind.

Improving women's access to health and education needs to be combined with efforts to strengthen women's ability to participate fully and equally in economic and political life. Poverty cannot be fought in an efficient manner if women are not allowed or enabled to utilise their potential fully and contribute to the development process. Obstacles must therefore be removed to ensure that women are not excluded from rights to own and inherit property, to borrow money or open bank accounts. Women must also be allowed into the political decision-making process on an equal footing with men. The Beijing Platform for Action should carry a clear message in these respects.

It is furthermore of great importance to take action to secure women's human rights. It cannot be accepted that certain countries continue to discriminate against women with the reference that this is due to specific traditions, culture or religion. Women's rights are human rights, and should be reflected in legislation and legal practice. Special measures need to be taken to secure the human rights of women in situations of war and armed conflicts.

The situation for children is intimately linked to the situation for women.Improving women's situation also means improving childrens living condition. The plight of so many of our children necessitate our concern and increased assistance.The situation for the girl child is of special concern. Recent reports clearly shows that the girls in so many countries suffer from extreme discrimination and harassment from the day they are born.They are the one that always seems to be at the end of the que when food and access to health and education facilities are distributet. I will give special attention to these children and increase our budget allocations for this purpose. I am also considering various initiatives towards the unacceptable abuse of child labour including to take an initiative to host an international strategy conference on this subject.

We can conclude that there has been a certain progress in our efforts of targeting women in the development process. It should however now, based on the experiences we have gained, be a main objective to fully integrate the gender dimension in all development cooperation.

Accordingly, a gender perspective will have to be integrated in all development co-operation, and likewise the responsibility to achieve this should also be mainstreamed.This does not mean that we are ready, yet, to do away with specific programmes and projects. Their main purpose, however,must be to facilitate such mainstreaming.
In multilateral development co-operation our support to the established gender policy-programmes on women will continue, and particular emphasis will be put on the implementation of these programmes.

Before I leave the floor to You Dr. ul Haq, let me thank You for all your efforts as the principal architect and editor of the Human Development Report. This is the last time we see Dr. ul Haq in this capacity. Ul Haq has greatly contributed to giving UNDP a face and a vision through the yearly reports. With the six editions, the messages and ideas have contributed greatly to the international debate on development issues. We saw this in Copenhagen, where some of the proposals from last year's Human Development Report were at the centre of our discussions at the Social Summit. The reports have been stimulating and innovative - and sometimes provocative.

Closing remarks

I wish you well in your work at the workshop in the two days ahead. I look however forward to seeing you later this evening, at my Reception at the occasion of the world launch in Oslo of the 1995 Human Development Report.

Thank you!

---

Lagt inn 23 august 1995 av Statens forvaltningstjeneste, ODIN-redaksjonen