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Speaking on behalf of the Minister, the Norwegian Ambassador to Ethiopia, Mr. Svent Anton Holmsen, stated that governance should not be perceived as a new condition which donors imposed on their development partners, but rather as a means of breaking the vicious cycle of underdevelopment. The components of good governance could be said to include participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness and efficiency, accountability, and strategic vision. The pursuit of all these aspects of governance required an informed public that understood how society worked; a key factor was education.
Governance issues, he noted, had a central place in Norwegian aid policy. Norway had established a trust fund for governance in Africa with UNDP in December 1995 and had hailed the inclusion of governance in the UN Special Initiative on Africa. The documentation before the Forum showed that progress was being made at the country level, and that the various approaches were country-specific.
In closing, he urged the richest countries to greater responsibility for providing the necessary financial resources, and affirmed that the UN had an important role to play in creating an enabling environment for development.