High-level visit highlights CMI’s role in shaping Norwegian development policy
On Wednesday 5 November, CMI welcomed Norway’s new State Secretary for International Development, Stine Renate Håheim, and the newly appointed Director of Norad, Gunn Jorid Roset. As key partners in development cooperation, their visit offered an important opportunity to share insights from CMI’s research and contribute to shaping Norwegian development policy.
The visit included presentations from several CMI researchers and a public event addressing the dramatic global cuts in aid and the implications for Norway’s development engagement.
At an internal meeting, State Secretary Håheim outlined the knowledge needs for Norwegian development policy before hearing CMI researchers present on topics ranging from gender equality and poverty reduction, to tax, anti-corruption and the war in Ukraine.
‘We are very pleased to welcome State Secretary Håheim and Norad-director Roset to CMI. Their visit is an excellent opportunity to share our research-based knowledge and show how we can help shape policy priorities and improve the results of foreign aid’, said CMI Director Espen Villanger.
Håheim and Roset also participated in a public event in Bergen Global focusing on the global aid cuts and their implications for Norway’s development engagement. Other panelists included Ottar Mestad, director of the Development Learning Lab, Hilde Selbervik, director of the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Center, and Liv Tønnessen, research professor at CMI.
Villanger stresses the importance of contributing to public debate on the rapidly changing landscape of development aid.
‘Helping the poorest and most vulnerable countries is easily overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and our own challenges, but we must not lose sight of the tremendous development challenges. CMI plays a key role in reminding us that tackling the world’s most pressing issues depends on keeping development, poverty reduction and human rights aid high on the global agenda’.
