FRANCAISNorwegian Church Aid - History
2000-2010
-2000, ex-Yugoslavia: after NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) military intervention against the troops of Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo in 1999, NCA works on both sides, Serb and Albanian.
-From 2001, Burma: by dint of pleading and threatening, notably via its youth movement created in 1992 and called ChangeMakers, NCA gets that a Triumph underwear factory closes down in 2001. This company collaborated with the military dictatorship in Rangoon, underpaid its employees, was involved in child labour and claimed that leaving the country would just create more unemployment. Yet clothes exports from Burma to Norway don’t stop. So NCA lobbies the Norwegian Customs and Excises to publish a list of all clothing stores importing from Burma. In 2003, clothes exports from Burma to Norway eventually go down accordingly. In 2004, NCA then starts a campaign against the American clothing giant Tommy Hilfiger and its textile factories in Mae Sot along the Burmese border in Thailand.
-2003, Israel/Palestine: NCA joins the Norwegian campaign against the security wall that annex some parts of the West Bank and that the Israeli build in contravention of International Law. This position is criticised by members of the Lutheran Church in Norway, who claim that NCA gives financial assistance to the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation). According to a World Bank report published in September 2003, USD 898 million of international aid have been diverted by corrupt Palestinian authorities; in 2004, a working group of the European Parliament also asserts that some of this money is used by terrorist groups.
-2004, Haiti: in a country where they started to work in 1978, NCA and the LWF send relief to the victims of floods in May and civil unrest after the exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February.
-2005, Indonesia: NCA helps the victims of the tsunami and uses helicopters of the French Army (Operation Beryx) to bring relief to villagers isolated by the tidal wave of December 2004.
