Doublethink: the two faces of Norway’s foreign and development policy

This report looks at some key Norwegian foreign and development policies, some of which are controversial in terms of their impacts on poverty reduction and development. The paper states that Norway has taken a genuine and important ethical lead on some international policy issues, but the list of unethical policies is also long and becoming longer.

The paper finds the following:

• the government’s Pension Fund continues to invest in numerous companies abusing human rights and the environment
• Norway’s oil industry is increasingly active in states abusing human rights
• Norway is also a major, and increasing, emitter of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming
• Norwegian military equipment is still exported to a small number of human rights abusers
• the government is failing to establish legally-binding mechanisms to hold corporations to account for their unwarranted impacts; the government’s faith in voluntary mechanisms to improve corporate behaviour goes against United Nations calls for improved global governance
• Norway has not switched away from backing the World Bank’s ‘private sector development’ model. Rather, Norway continues to promote privatisation processes from which its own energy companies, in particular, are benefitting.

The paper concludes that Norway’s policy-makers need to make some hard decisions and develop new ideas if they are to promote genuinely ethical foreign policies.