Médicins Sans Frontières is using almost 60 per cent of the funds it collected world-wide following the tsunami catastrophe on activities to assist victims of the Pakistan earthquake and other crises.

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More oil money to pakistan

Norway has announced its third extra-budgetary humanitarian allocation of 2006 - NOK 260 million for the victims of the Pakistan earthquake, all of which is to be channelled through the UN. Earlier this year, the former government committed NOK 1 billion for the tsunami and NOK 300 million, mostly for Pakistan.

The annual report from the Norwegian Auditor General reveals that Norway is cutting NOK 60 million in aid for primary education in Tanzania this year due to insufficient financial reporting. The report launches serious criticism and doubts about reporting related to budget and sector support.

When the former Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson presented her last aid budget to the Parliament earlier this fall, it painted a rosy picture of Norwegian aid to Tanzania and proposed a sharp increase (43 per cent) in aid to the country.

From being an active, but mainstream country in aid, Norway has suddenly become the OECD’s most radical player. The new Development Minister Erik Solheim is about to shake up the house.

The Finnish Foreign Ministry is currently looking at whether a grant issued to the Joensuu-based European Forest Institute (EFI) in 2004 should have been put up for competitive tender.

Sida is generally positive about the evaluation of five donors’ post-Taliban aid to Afghanistan, carried out by Chr. Michelsens Institute. (See DT 17/05) Drawing partly on proposals in the CMI report, Sida has delivered its input to the new Swedish strategy on Afghanistan to the Foreign Ministry for consideration.

Danish framework NGOs are divided over the Danish government’s decision that state-financed development organisations will from next year have to co-finance government grants through their own fund raising.

Save the Children Finland has become the tenth Finnish NGO to enter into a framework partnership with the Foreign Ministry; the second (after Plan Finland) to achieve this special status this year.

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a thinly veiled threat to Uganda in connection with the arrest of Kizza Besigye.