Visiting Norway, it is easy to see why it consistently ranks among the top nations of the world for quality of life. Transport is slick and efficient, and a massive, late Winter dump of snow that would have brought most British cities to a standstill is brushed off by Oslo’s residents with barely a shrug.
Much of Norway’s success can be attributed to its huge oil and gas wealth, which has left the country of just 5.5 million people with the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world, worth more than $2 trillion (£1.6trn). The fund, which continues to grow year-on-year, provides around one-quarter of the government budget.
I’m here to meet Åsmund Aukrust, Norway’s development minster to talk about the country’s decision to maintain foreign aid at 1 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI). That sovereign wealth fund puts it in a privileged position to be able to do so. But maintaining aid at such a high level remains a stark contrast to the cuts taking place in other European countries like the UK (cut to 0.3 per cent), France (cut to 0.38 per cent) and Germany (cut to 0.43 per cent).
For Aukrust, though, the decision goes beyond financial commitments. On 22 July 2011, as a 26-year-old youth member of the Labour Party he was at a summer camp on the island of Utøya when Neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Breivik shot dead 69 people. After hearing a bang and seeing people running, he ran outside, saw the bodies, and hid in a tent until Brevik was captured.
That day, Aukrust says, has “shaped” both survivors and Norway as a whole, demonstrating all that is at stake in the fight between liberal, democratic values, and those who would seek to oppose them. “For me, it highlighted how vitally important politics is – that it is quite simply a matter of life and death,” he says. “Being exposed to racism, discrimination and hatred – there is hardly anything worse than that.”
Before heading to Utøya, Breivik also detonated a car bomb that killed eight people and devastated the Norwegian government building in Oslo. I meet Aukrust shortly before the Foreign Ministry’s return to the site in the centre of the city, nearly fifteen years later (“most of our best art has already been removed,” he apologises as he ushers me into his office). The move, which finally took place this week, is a hugely positive moment for the country, Aukrust believes. “It is a reminder that we have been through difficult times in Norway. The terror attack on 22 July was an attempt to destroy our democratic, diverse society, and we have overcome that,” he says.
That staunch belief in the power of politics to do good has seen Aukrust, now 41, rise to his current position in the centre-left administration. Asked what he wants to be the legacy from that day, he says: “That we responded to the political crisis by rallying around international cooperation and took up the fight on important issues.”
Much of the rest of our conversation is, naturally, focused on the myriad of humanitarian catastrophes facing the world of 2026, including wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan. We meet some days before the US and Israel launched their strikes on Iran – but as with those other crises, Norway has announced significant support for the victims of war in the Middle East. Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said the war was “making the world more dangerous for everyone” even if Norway’s oil exports jumped by 68 per cent in March, a record high.
Norway is continuing to champion foreign aid abroad in part to express “international solidarity” at a time when so many crises are raging, says Aukrust. “This is something we have long traditions of here in Norway, going back to just a couple of years after the Second World War when we started our first aid programme in India,” he says.
But it is important to keep providing aid in order to defend the UN Charter and the concept of a secure global order that looks out for each other, believes Aukrust. “I am very concerned with the financial crisis around development, and also with the political crisis we are facing with attacks on the fundamental principle of multilateralism and the rules-based international order,” he says.
While geographically large, Norway is ultimately a small global player whose very survival depends on international law preventing other countries – including its neighbour to the north, Russia – from threatening it. “In Oslo, we are closer to Ukraine than we are to our northern border with Russia,” he says. “In the end it’s the same laws that should be protecting people in Gaza, Ukraine, or Greenland that should be protecting us – which is why the Norwegian government is taking a very principled position on the defence of international law.”
There is, therefore, self-interest in maintaining a global outlook through a well-funded aid programme – but that self-interest also extends beyond a broad concept of national security to more practical things like migration and health. “There is the War in Syria, which led hundreds of thousands of refugees to come to our border, and also the issue of health crises, which we know from the Covid pandemic do not stop at our border,” says Aukrust. Effective foreign aid programmes can help mitigate such global threats, he says.
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Aukrust is clear that there are inefficiencies in aid programmes that need to be addressed, with Norway active in discussions around reform of the United Nations. “The UN will never be perfect, but it needs to be better and more efficient”, the minister says. Meanwhile, domestically, the government is currently consulting on a new development strategy that would help Norway deliver aid more effectively, involving input from researchers, activists, civil society members and other stakeholders.
Aukrust repeats many of the talking points that countries like the UK push when defending their own programmes of aid reforms and cuts, including in the need for more private sector involvement and the need to take less paternalistic approaches. Only Norway is carrying out its reforms while pledging to maintain its high level of foreign aid, rather than suggesting that to boost efficiency of aid programmes, they must also be cut.
“The aim is not to cut our funding, but to spend it more effectively,” the minister says, pointing out that there are many countries that still struggle to attract foreign capital beyond foreign aid. “I think too often aid and development is only criticised by those who want to reduce it, and I think it is important that we become better at criticising ourselves.”
Much of Norway’s new development focus will be about prioritising areas such as climate change and women and girls that countries like the US – traditionally the world’s biggest aid donor before devastating cuts were announced by Donald Trump last year – has turned away from. “When it comes to the issue of sexual or reproductive rights, we are taking a very clear political position, which is that they are areas of the highest value,” Aukrust says.
This position is also filtering down across Norway’s broader aid ecosystem. At few streets away, Kaj-Martin Georgsen, secretary general of the Norwegian branch of the non-profit organisation CARE, tells me that his organisation has been facing up to “financial cuts as well as political attacks on our core mission of gender”. Their response has been to double down on gender-focused programmes. However, the decision by Donald Trump’s administration to extend the so-called Mexico City policy that bars groups receiving foreign aid from promoting abortion so that it includes gender identity or diversity programmes., is bringing challenges.
“It’s becoming more complicated to run gender-focused programmes, and I fear that there will be fewer of them going forward not only because they receive less funding but also because there is a growing tendency to see women’s rights as an add-on or luxury that we can do when we get more funding,” says CARE’s Georgsen. “We need to continue to see aid as more than just a humanitarian response, but as an effort to use water, food and medical aid to build resilient societies and empower people long-term.”
While the current Labour minority government remains committed to the development agenda, Norway is not immune to the populist political forces that have put other wealthy countries on an isolationist track. The country’s official opposition and main right wing force, the Progress Party, is calling for sharp cuts to the aid budget – though opinion polls point to continued strong support for Norway’s high levels of aid for the time being.
On the left, meanwhile, there were criticisms of the government’s approach, due to the declining share of the aid budget being directed towards poverty reduction, while Ukraine and refugees receive more money.
“We have a large budget of almost 60 billion NOK [£4.6bn] but there is still huge pressure on every penny,” Aukrust says in response to this criticism. “Unfortunately, there are enormous needs everywhere. Ukraine is our biggest recipient at the moment, followed by Palestine, and I think that this is absolutely correct.” Similar arguments have been made by the UK’s Labour Party for maintaining aid for Ukraine and Gaza while the funds given to Africa falls.
Faced with a full inbox of humanitarian concerns around the world, Aukrust also remains clear-sighted that the heating planet should remain a top priority.
“Climate change is the biggest challenge of our time, and there is a clear linkage between climate change and development that we are focused on,” he says. “It is impossible for me to understand how the linkage between climate change and development has become so controversial.”
At Cop30, the UN climate conference held in Brazil in November, Norway pledged $3bn to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), which was President Lula of Brazil’s flagship global fund designed to pay developing countries to maintain their standing forests. Representing nearly half the $6.7bn raised – with countries including the UK failing to contribute – the entire project could have fallen flat were it not for Norway’s contribution.
It can be easy, Aukrust says, to look at the state of the world today and lose heart. But with so many other historic difficulties including “wars, colonisation and Apartheid” having previously been overcome, Aukrust believes that – with an attitude of global solidarity, which is reflected in a fair amount of foreign aid from rich countries – the current set of global challenges can be no different.
What continues to lift him in his work, he adds, is that even in some of the worst disaster zones around the world, there is always humanity to be found.
“What really gives me hope when I travel to crises or conflict-affected places is to meet with people, so many good people, that even in the darkest hours are able to take care of each other and protect each other,” he says, adding that the “people are always the hero of the story”.
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
