FRANCAISNorwegian People’s Aid - Comments
5) Links to politics
-In Norway, NPA is very close to the Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet) and the trade union confederation LO (Lands Organisasjonen). The organisation’s staff has an important number of retired politicians and trade unionists. Thus Odd Wivegh was a member of various commissions of the Labour Party until he was nominated as NPA’s general secretary in the 1980s. The organisation also includes people that are to become politicians or trade unionists. Before being appointed as a Labour Minister of Development Co-operation in 1986-1988, Vesla Vetlesen, for instance, worked for Save the Children in 1973-1975 and NPA in 1975-1980.
-Abroad, NPA parallels the Norwegian diplomacy with all its paradoxes. An ally of the US and a member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), Oslo supported liberation movements that were recognised by the Soviet Union and received their weapons from countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact. In the same vein, NPA informed against the Ronald Reagan Administration’s policy in Central America after the 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. On the other side, NPA channelled the anticommunist American aid for the reconstruction of Norway within the framework of the Marshall Plan after the second world war. In the 1990s, the organisation helped the US African foreign policy by supporting the Sudan People’s Liberation Army against the Islamic fundamentalist junta in Khartoum. Today, the most important donor of NPA outside Norway is the American governmental aid agency USAID.
