Welcome address, NCHR 25 th anniversary 29.08.2012. (Venue: Teatersalen, Hotel Continental, Oslo) Nils A Butenschøn, Director Excellences, friends and colleagues, On behalf of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights I am happy and honoured to welcome you to this celebration of our 25 th anniversary. Like any such reception, be it in the honour of a particular person, a business corporation or an institution, the purpose should not only be to present the jubilant in the best possible way and to receive some nice words of congratulations, - of course we hope there will be a few more importantly the purpose should be to use the occasion as an opportunity for colleagues, friends, and partners to meet. I am extremely happy that so many of you could come here today and fulfil that important purpose. In addition to the reception today, we organize a number of conferences and other events throughout this year to mark the anniversary. Many of you have already taken part in one or more of these events in the spring semester, and you are certainly welcome to the upcoming events this autumn. For details, please visit our website. You have rightly observed that I open this reception in the English language. That is because we are fortunate to have some foreign friends here that do not understand Norwegian and because most Norwegians understand English. However, we are a Norwegian institution addressing the Norwegian public, and Norwegian is the working language of the University of Oslo. That is why most of the following interventions will be in Norwegian. But to make sure that everybody should be able to follow the speakers we have arranged for rough simultaneous translation by whispering for foreign friends. The program that now follows will all together take about one hour, followed, I am happy to say, with more servings of canapés! The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights; founding ideas, challenges and visions for the future. NCHR has developed from a core group of a few persons into a complex institution with some 70 staff members and a wide variety of activities. Our history can be described along two dimensions that have defined us as an institution from the beginning. First, it is the national dimension: We are an institution set up to fulfil certain national tasks within the field of human rights. It is important to be aware of the fact that we were established not by the University or the Ministry of Higher Education, but by a decision in the Norwegian 1
Parliament in 1986. The basic idea was that Norway needed an independent research-based competence centre that could provide expertise and recruitment and training of experts in the field of human rights available for state authorities, the research community and the civil society. This need was related to the increased importance at the time of international HR standards as a source of law, political action, and international engagement. This mandate to strengthen human rights competence in Norway has followed us throughout the years and has been implemented in close cooperation with partners in this country and abroad. Our relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been particularly important; I think it reasonable to say that the ministry functioned as the midwife when we were born. Our ambitions have always been to stay in the forefront of academic human rights institutions, but also to have an impact on the implementation of human rights abroad and at home. Our cooperation with foreign partners, in particular with our Nordic sister institutions, has been decisive in this regard. The second dimension that defines us as an institution is our affiliation to the University of Oslo. Today we are the University s cross-disciplinary research centre organised as a unit under the Faculty of Law. Our university affiliation was actually foreseen by the Parliament in its 1986 decision, but took effect only gradually, beginning in 1995. The Centre was not fully integrated as a unit at the Faculty of Law until 2003. So we started our academic existence outside the University, at that time as a program under the Norwegian Research Council (under the name of the Norwegian Institute for Human Rights), but have now developed into a full-fledged university centre still however with very few permanent academic positions. All evaluations of the Centre since the mid-1990 s have been very positive, but also pointed to that shortcoming. The lack of permanent positions is our main worry for the future and our main challenge to the university leadership. The Faculty of Law has supported us and allocated extra resources over the last couple of years. The question is how we can be able to secure our cross-disciplinarity in the future. NCHR s role as Norway s National Institution of Human Rights. So, we were given this combined role as a national competence centre and a university research centre. The main explanation is very simple: Norway is unavoidably a very small country with high ambitions in the fields of peace-building and human rights, very few human rights experts and a finance ministry that doesn t want to spend more money than absolutely necessary on Norwegian institutions for human rights. Such are the facts and such were the considerations when the Government in 2001 accorded NCHR with a mandate as Norway s NI under the United Nations so-called Paris Principles. The leading idea is that NIs should monitor government policies on the basis of independence secured by law, and function as a core national mechanism for the protection and implementation of 2
international human rights standards. The standard model internationally is a HR commission based in a separate statute or the constitution. This decision by the Government to mandate us as a NI was certainly made in good faith, so to speak. The reasoning was based on the fact again, that Norway is a small country etc as I mentioned; in addition, we have relatively few HR problems in Norway, we have the ombudsmen institutions to take care of individual complaints and we had the Centre which already existed so why set up a completely new commission? It was convenient for the government to accord us with the mandate as Norway s NI and it was convenient for us and helped us a great deal to strengthen our competence, not least our academic competence. But in March last year our Board of Directors decided to discontinue our function as NI, a decision that was supported by the Faculty and the university leadership. The question is: why? The decision was based on thorough discussions and internal reports as well on a report by an independent ad hoc working group set up by the Foreign Ministry who proposed the establishment of a HR Commission in Norway. These reports and recommendations to note of the fact that a recognised National Institution today is a somewhat different animal than it were 12 years ago. A university is not its natural habitat any more. The underlying problem with the Norwegian Model (if we can call it that) is a problem of role definition between, on the one hand, the Centre as a monitoring body advocating certain policies and on the other, our role as a university-affiliated research institute. It is in fact a problem of independence both as seen from the NI point of view and as seen from the perspective of academic freedom. It is probably not by accident that the University of Oslo is the only university in the world that holds a mandate as its country s NI. We have always been aware of this dilemma, and have tried to make adjustments in our organisation in order to satisfy concerns from both sides. The Sveaas report commissioned by the Foreign Ministry made it absolutely clear that Norway s NI cannot continue in its present form and should be re-established outside the university. The challenge The world has moved on, not least when it comes to the role and responsibilities of NIs within United Nations procedures. This is in itself a positive development and strengthens mechanisms for national implementation of HR. But it also means that our mandate as NI which focuses mainly on our role as a research-based advisory body is no longer considered by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for HR as in compliance with the Paris Principles. If the Norwegian authorities in consultation with us and other relevant actors in Norway do not come up with a reliable plan to solve this challenge within months, the Norwegian NI will lose its current status within the UN system. And that is a problem not only for us as a NI, but also for Norway as a country that portrays itself as a champion of HR 3
globally. The question is: What will be the future institutional architecture for HR protection in Norway? This is what we are really struggling with now; what will be our role and position in this architecture after our function as NI has been ended? In this connection I will stress one important point: NCHR will certainly continue its role as a national competence centre also after it has ended its NI mandate, both in regard to Norway s HR dialogues, recruitment and training of HR experts, HR education, dissemination and an active role in the public domain. The question is how it should be organised and financed and how we can cooperate with a new NI. I can only say that I will listen carefully and with some expectations to the next speaker, Foreign Minister Støre, who is the responsible minister for HR. And I will also listen carefully to what University Rector Ottersen has to say about us as the University s cross-disciplinary research centre. But before that, I have not forgotten that we are here to celebrate our achievements which I think are substantial over the last 25 years. Very many persons deserve thanks and praise for their commitments and hard work in order to build the NCHR and develop its potentials. The preparatory work leading up to the establishment of the Centre started already in the 1970 s led by Prof Torkel Opsahl (who unfortunately passed away in 1993) and Asbjørn Eide and joined by Jan Helgesen. The all worked at or had their background at the Faculty of Law. When the Centre became a reality in 1987 the core group, with Asbjørn as Director and driving force, was joined by Bård Anders Andreassen, a political scientist affiliated to the HR Project at the Chr Michelsens Institute in Bergen. Then came Tore Lindholm as the first associate professor. They are all here today, Asbjørn and Tore as emeriti but working as hard as ever, and Jan and Bård Anders as members of our management group. Much could be said and probably should be said about your fantastic contributions to the success of our Centre and we will still need you in the coming years. But all I can do now is to salute you and say: skål! I will also thank former and the present Chairs of our Board, Trond Bakkevik, Lucy Smith, Hans Petter Graver, Liv Finstad and Frederik Zimmer. Again I cannot summerise all your contributions and efforts on our behalf, but the value of having wise, high-ranking and respected persons as Chair of the Board cannot be measured easily. A special word of appreciation goes to Lucy for her critically important support also in her capacity as Rector of the University of Oslo in a difficult stage of our development. I wish you all the best Lucy. Skål for the Board! Finally, warm thanks go to my administration that work tirelessly, some times more than is good for their health, so that the rest of us can do our job and hopefully keep our health. 4
Daniel Kjelling, Head of administration, keeps track of all of our activities, the budget, reports, and all staff who come and go, their contracts, rights and obligations. And not least, Daniel is always committed to the work that we do and the Centre s mission. Daniel, you do a hell of a job! A special thank today goes to Chr. Boe Astrup, Head of information, who is responsible for the practical arrangements of this event. My last word of introduction is to direct your attention to our most recent publication which is a bibliography of all publications produced by of staff since 1987 specially made for our anniversary by our chief librarian Kirsten Fuglestved. The bibliography lists more than 1780 academic publications on HR topics, including 166 books. 5