FRANCAISNorwegian People’s Aid - Comments
3) The financial resources
-Thanks to its political connections, NPA can rely on the financial support of the Norwegian government and the 825,000 members of the 24 syndicates of the trade union confederation LO (Lands Organisasjonen). In the 1990s, write for instance Ole Jacob Sending and Iver Neumann, its budget increased a lot because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs encouraged the organisation to take-up mine-clearance in war-torn countries. After NCA, NPA was still the second Norwegian NGO to receive funding from the cooperation agency NORAD in 2003. Yet the organisation had to develop its fund raising capacity because it was closed to bankruptcy. It was also necessary to reduce the number of employees in 2002 as the proportion of operating costs allocated to salaries was too important. In 2001, 43% of NPA’s budget was used to pay 107 employees in the headquarters in Oslo, 119 in refugee hostels in Norway, 51 short-term contracts and 2 500 local workers abroad.
-To improve its fund raising capacity, NPA, a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has developed mine clearance expertise for Norwegian oil companies, as in Western Iran where Norsk Hydro conducted seismic explorations. The running of slot machines provides the main bulk of the organisation’s private financial resources and a gambling project on the Internet was under consideration in 2002. NPA also receives parts of the sale of lottery tickets in Norway.
-Such a “commercialisation” has naturally caused much debate. In its 2002 annual report, the Executive Committee of NPA admitted that gambling could be harmful. But it argued that it was up to the government to regulate the sector. Moreover, the income from slot machines allowed the organisation to circumvent the political conditions of public grants. Yet NPA accepted to work for Statoil in Angola or Norsk Hydro in Iran: these programmes are also earmarked since they serve the interests of Norwegian oil companies in the countries where they operate. In so doing, NPA has taken a different stance than NGOs like the NCA, which denounces the humanitarian and social responsibilities of oil companies financing dictatorships and warmongers governments in the Third-World.
