FRANCAISNorwegian People’s Aid - History
2000-2009
-2000, Norway: a less dogmatic general-secretary, Eva Bjøreng, succeeds Halle Jørn Hansen and Odd Wivegh as the executive head of NPA. Thanks to her experience in the Kreditkassen bank, she decides to reduce the administrative expenditures of the organisation and to focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. She resigns in 2006.
-2001-2004, Rwanda: in Umutara province, NPA finances the construction of a tribunal to judge the persons suspected of genocide in 1994. But the authoritarian regime of President Paul Kagamé makes the organisation’s work difficult. In July 2004, the Government wants to expel NPA as the Parliament accuses the Norwegian to back local NGOs that foster “ethnic divisions”.
-2002, Tanzania: unlike the NRC (Norwegian Refugee Council), NPA supports the repatriation of Burundi refugees, though some of them explicitly express fear and reluctance to return to their homeland because of insecurity.
-2003, Sri Lanka: while the peace negotiations progress between Tamil secessionists and the government in Colombo, NPA continues a mine clearance programme in the North of the island, around Jaffna and Vanni, with the British MAG (Mines Advisory Group) and a local NGO, the TRO (Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation). The TRO is the “humanitarian” branch of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), a blacklisted guerrilla that the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) considers to be a terrorist organisation after the attacks in New York on September 11 2001. The TRO is suspected of financing the purchase of arms for the Tamil secessionists and is investigated by Scotland Yard in Great-Britain in May 2002. Amongst the founders of the TRO is Doctor Sathasivam Maheswaran “Periya”, who tried to equip the LTTE with an Air Force before being arrested in Colombo in 1993, serving a prison sentence and leaving Sri Lanka to live in exile in London.
