FPA Norway

FPA-members with some spouses and old friends had a nice Christmas party at NIPS on Nov 27. The food was tapas, with a hint of Venezuela, the country of this year’s Peace Prize laurate. Sadly, this is the last event in the press centre, which closes on Monday.

On Monday we had our traditional meeting to get insights on the potential laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize, this year with Nina Græger director at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) and Halvard Leira, senior researcher from the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI).

There is little chance that this year's laureate will be the US president Donald Trump. The experts instead suggest that the prize will not go to an individual, but rather to an organisation working on topics and or conflicts that have become central in 2024.

Despite the world is witnessing more conflicts than ever before, neither Græger nor Leira think that this year's prize would not be handed out - a decision that despite being rare, the Committe has the power to adopt.

Both Graeger and Leira firmly believe that the Norwegian Nobel Committee will take its opportunity to find the right candidate and shed a light to occuring peacemaking, irrespective of the pressure they might receive ... we will all know more on Friday at 11 am!

We are in the final stages of the electoral campaign, with polls closing on Monday September 8.

Earlier in August, FPA was able to met the leaders of the two biggest parties within the right-wing coalition.

While Hoyre’s leader Erna Solberg and
Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide hosted FPA members at their premises, Sylvi Listhaug from the Fremskrittspartiet (FrP) came to our office to discuss the party’s positions and a coalition's potential victory.

On Sep 2, Johannes Bergh, Research Director at the Institute of Social Reesearch, was kind to share some of the things that characterise the parliamentary election in Norway on September 8. "A year ago most thought that the centre-conservative parties would win the election. The rise in the support for the Labour Party is unlike almost anything we have seen in Norwegian politics, he said. Three of the reasons : Jens Stoltenberg joined the government, the Centre part left the government and Donald Trump came to power again in the USA.
The second FPA guest FPAthat day was Rasmus Hansson, the first member of the Green Party ever to be elected to parliament in 2013: “Climate is increasingly ignored in Norwegian politics,” he said, lamenting a lack of focus on the environment.
He accused the ruling Labour and opposition Conservative Parties of arguing that Europe needed Norway’s oil and gas exports after cuts in imports from Russia because of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Hansson said that the Ukraine war was a figleaf covering up the fact that the two parties’ pro-oil and gas policies had not changed for years despite the worsening environmental crisis. “It’s the same policy in a new wrapping,” he said.
“We are really profiting from f**king up the climate,” he said.
He said the Greens hoped to win enough seats in parliament to ensure a victory of the Labour-led centre-left. That meant the Party could have sway to discourage Labour’s plans for continued exploration for oil and gas.

⛑️ 🦺 We are thankful that Jan Egeland, Secretary General at the NRC - Norwegian Refugee Council , got the time to meet journalists from FPA, last week.

The humanitarian sector is facing rising pressures as global aid funding shrinks, and humanitarian organisations are continually hindered in their work, especially by the Israeli government, Egeland says.

FPA held it's annual general meeting on April 3. Richard Milne was reelected as the president of the association with Gwladys Fouché as deputy leader. Alister Doyle takes over as treasurer. All three seen in the picture above. The other board members are: Mieszko Czarnecki, Pierre Deshayes, Sigrid Harms, Björn Lindahl, Daniela de Lorenzo, Anita Pratap, Elisabeth Ulven and Ott Ummelas.