News of Norway, February 10, 2004
Former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton presented the foundation’s Peacemaker / Peacebuilder Award to Ambassador Knut Vollebaek at a ceremony at the Norwegian Embassy on January 30, 2003.
“We all associate Norway with peace because Alfred Nobel stipulated that the Norwegian government present the Nobel Peace Prize,” Hamilton said during the award ceremony. “But Norway’s dedication to peace goes far beyond giving awards – no matter how eminent, he added."
Peaceful solutions
"It was a Norwegian, Trygve Lie, after all, who was the U.N.’s first Secretary General. And in 1959, Norway created one of the first national peace research institutes – an institution that helped inspire the National Peace Foundation, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. In recent years, Norway has played a vital role in the pursuit of peace in some of the world’s most intractable conflicts.”
Hamilton, who is the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, noted that Norway, with a population of 4.5 million people, had one of the largest per capita foreign aid programs in the world. He added that the Norwegian Government is dedicated to pursuing peaceful solutions to conflicts in several countries, among them Sri Lanka and Sudan.
“From Norway, we can learn key lessons,” Hamilton said. “One is that peace building takes time and patience and commitment. Another is that outside parties should never seek to control processes,” he added, referring to Norway’s refusal to partake in any dialogs unless requested to by both parties of a conflict.
No hidden agenda
Accepting the award, Ambassador Vollebaek attempted to explain why Norway has become a sought-after facilitator in conflict resolution. He noted that Norway is a small country with no colonial past, and that the country is not thought to have a hidden agenda. This, Vollebaek argued, is seen as a good basis for trust.
He also noted that there are historical reasons for Norway’s international involvement. One of them is that Norway used to be the country in Europe with the highest number of missionaries per capita. After traveling around the world, they brought home a global, social awareness which has in turn led to broad support for development assistance to poorer countries today.
The award ceremony and dinner was attended by an intimate group of approximately 30 people, among them Stephen Strickland, who is a member of the board of advisers of the National Peace Foundation. Upon being awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award, Mr. Strickland noted that peace was not only the absence of war, but also a continued involvement in development assistance.