STATEMENT
UNHCR Standing Committee: 92nd Session, 11-13 March 2025
Agenda Item 7 - Strategic partnerships, including coordination.
Statement by Norway
Check against delivery
13 March 2025
Norway welcomes the update.
Norway is pleased to learn of the progress made by UNHCR to diversify and strengthen its partnerships across the humanitarian, development and peace nexus. Particularly by including local organisations and mechanisms of meaningful participation by the displaced and stateless to increase their ability to influence and shape the response.
We have over the last two days heard a lot about the interesting cooperation with the IFIs globally and in many country settings and how some host countries have managed to assist host communities and refugees and displaced people with own funding and development funding.
But we are moving into a new funding landscape and we are concerned about the localization agenda. Local organizations are heavily affected by the funding cuts.
We encourage UNHCR to have an open discussion on mitigation measures and how best to adjust existing programmes to match new needs and ensure continuity.
On inter-agency coordination it is even more important to look at the structure and the many proposals for simplification and efficiency of the humanitarian system.
In this new landscape, we all need to adapt. As donors we should do our bit to work effectively and efficiently, reduce duplication and bureaucracy. Donors must simplify too. Less bureaucrasy is necessary.
And even more important- we as donors must simplify ourselves and the way we interact with UNHCR
Norway welcomes UNHCR’s engagement with internally displaced people through operational delivery, leadership and coordination. in 2024. We welcome the new structure which has been designed to sustain and expand its efforts on IDPs.
UNHCR should continue to be a champion on promoting solutions to internal displacement. Norway will continue our engagement on the issue of IDPs. We have recently decided to replenish our support to the Internal Displacement Solutions Fund and would encourage others to do the same.
We encourage UNHCR to rethink refugee response in a longer-term perspective. As highlighted in the MOPAN assessment, it is important to reduce the risk of UNHCR becoming “stuck” as the primary long-term service provider in protracted refugee situations. Development actors should, in cooperation with host countries and countries of origin, take more responsibility, to include solutions to displacement in their programmes.