In these conflicts, Norway and the peace mediators cooperated closely

Translated to english from Panoramanyheter.no
By Gunnar Zachrisen
Published 23.03.2026

Photo: David Harland has been leading the Norwegian-supported organization Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland and coordinating work on peace processes since 2011. Here, the peace mediator shows a document in which the Basque separatist movement ETA confirms that it is disbanding.
Valentin Flauraud / AP / NTB

Tigray, the Philippines, Aceh, the Black Sea and the Basque Country. These are five key words for conflicts where an international peace centre in Switzerland – with Norwegian support – has contributed to agreements on peace and conflict resolution over the past 25 years.

In this interview, David Harland, Executive Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD),  reveals new and little-known aspects of HD’s role as a discreet facilitator of peace processes and the close historical partnership with Norway.

In collaboration with HD, Norway has contributed in various ways with funding, expertise, meeting places, contact networks and diplomatic efforts – in a number of peace processes, he explains.

– All in all, this support – given the results we have achieved – has been a very good and profitable investment, both for Norway and the rest of the world, he claims.

According to Harland, Norwegian support was key to both the mediation that resulted in an agreement to disband ETA, the establishment of the Black Sea Initiative during the Ukraine war, and the mediation that ultimately ended the bloody war in Tigray. For the peace process in Tigray in northern Ethiopia, Norway’s importance was about funding, but it was also one of the few processes to have had a Norwegian mediator.

Panorama has previously discussed the significant Norwegian support for HD, totaling approximately 1 billion kroner since the turn of the millennium.

– Discretion is key

Harland and HD’s staff rarely give interviews, but ahead of the upcoming investigation into the Foreign Service and Norwegian peace engagements, he is making an exception – to explain what the centre’s role actually entails.

The experienced New Zealand ex-diplomat als rejects criticism from some Norwegian parliamentarians about HD’s closedness and discretion by explaining the logic behind it.

The peace mediator emphasises the difference between a “think tank” and the conflict resolution and peace-making work that HD does in a large number of countries around the world, mainly in developing regions. The work is most often about peace facilitation. 

“Discretion is key. This is especially true in the early stages of a dialogue process,” says Harland.

He points out that the rhetoric between the parties in a conflict can be harsh, and that any revelation of contact between them can be very sensitive for the parties.

In an interview with Panorama, the experienced peace mediator points to five different conflicts to explain the value of Norwegian assistance to HD’s peace mediation efforts: Aceh, Tigray, the Philippines, the Black Sea and the Basque Country.

1. The civil war in the troubled Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra in Indonesia

This was the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue’s first success, where HD facilitated negotiations for a ceasefire agreement in the civil war. This led to an agreement to halt the fighting in 2002.

The head of the peace mediators points out that the work in Aceh formed a kind of pattern for how HD has worked on peace solutions. The organisation is normally involved in discreet talks with the parties and facilitation at an early stage. But before the peace dialogue enters a final phase and becomes public knowledge, others take over.

He says that in Aceh, it was initially the HD’s efforts that resulted in a cessation of fighting in 2002. However, it was Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari who took the main role as an external mediator and ultimately brokered the  Helsinki  Peace Agreement itself in 2005. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) also played an important role.

– Actually, such work involves an ongoing partnership, but we at HD tend to do the early facilitation before things move into a public process. And we have on various occasions done so together with Norway, which was, if not the largest, then at least one of the largest contributors to the agreement.

The Director of the mediation organisation adds that the peace agreement for Aceh probably saved thousands of lives.

2. The conflict in the Philippines, where government forces are fighting rebel groups

HD did similar peace facilitation work for the Philippines in the early 2000s, leading to a highly successful peace agreement that still applies to the Southern Philippines. 

Important parts of the early talks between the government and a rebel group took place in Norway, including at  the annual peace mediators’ gathering Oslo Forum . 

Harland recalls conversations that took place on a beautiful Norwegian summer evening in June, on a golf course near the hotel – against a backdrop of a landscape bathed in “a kind of midnight sun.”

– We managed to find a solution to a central point of contention – in the conversations there – with the beautiful Norwegian nature as a backdrop, recalls Harland. 

3. The conflict between Spain and the Basque separatist group ETA

Norway was, especially in the early years, heavily involved in the long and time-consuming negotiations that led to the dissolution of the enormous terrorist group ETA. Secret meetings between the parties took place in both Oslo and Geneva in the early years.

– It was very difficult, but in the end we actually announced the dissolution of ETA, it happened in this building where I am sitting, in 2018, says Harland – who is based in a stylish older building lent to HD by the city of Geneva.

HD’s task was to facilitate the talks. They managed to keep this work, which took place slowly and carefully, with a slow rapprochement between the parties, out of the media spotlight for ten years.

4. About the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, where a bloody war raged in the years 2020-2022

The Tigray War that began in November 2020 was considered the world’s bloodiest war during the two years it lasted – with enormous humanitarian consequences for the civilian population.

With Norwegian support, HD followed developments in Northern Ethiopia for many years and analysed the situation and the possibilities for engagement. 

According to Harland, an experienced former Norwegian diplomat and peace mediator played a key role in the process and helped bring in former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo as a trusted mediator. President Obasanjo was ultimately able, under the leadership of the African Union, to bring the parties together to end the war.

HD allowing other international actors to play a leading role in the final phases of a peace negotiation has been a common approach to the work.

The peace agreement was signed between the Ethiopian government and the regional party Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in November 2022.

5. The Black Sea agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022

The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue also played a significant role in the Black Sea Initiative between Russia and Ukraine. The idea was conceived in the HD building in Geneva – with Norwegian support, explains Harland.

The agreement was of great importance both for the parties – and for the international community. The UN has concluded that the resumption of exports in July 2022 helped to avert the worst consequences of a global food crisis. The blockade of the Black Sea ports had threatened to push around 50 million people into food crisis and hunger. The agreement helped to reopen the ports – and also to stabilise grain prices, especially to the benefit of the poorest countries in the world.

The agreement consisted of two separate agreements, one signed between Ukraine, Turkey and the UN and another signed between Russia, Turkey and the UN. The aim was to ensure the safe export of grain and other agricultural goods from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea during the ongoing war.

An important event on the road to an agreement was that Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, was invited and came to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and HD’s joint event, Oslo Forum, in June 2022.

– Here Norway once again showed its advantages. The talks took place during the forum. Here we clarified the details that later laid the foundation for an agreement of enormous economic and humanitarian importance for hundreds of millions of people in the world, he says.

Harland believes that the alternative – no agreement – ​​would have led to a sharp increase in international grain prices.

“Despite the acute lack of trust, 33 million tonnes of grain left Ukraine’s ports in the year to July. The UK says about 61% of that has gone to low- and middle-income countries (…). The World Food Programme bought about 750,000 tonnes of Ukrainian grain that was shipped immediately to places such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. Partly as a result of this, the price of grain stabilised at $800 (£620) per tonne, down from a high of $1,360,” wrote the British newspaper The Guardian the following year.

The agreement on open export ports, which was signed less than six months after the outbreak of full-scale war, also contributed billions of euros in export revenues for Ukraine, which would otherwise have declined to zero. At the same time, it reduced the financial burden on Ukraine’s Western backers, including Norway.

The Black Sea Grain Agreement collapsed the following year, on July 17, 2023, following Russian claims that the agreement was primarily in favor of Ukraine.

At the top of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ grant list for foundations 

As a recipient of over one billion Norwegian kroner in aid since 2000, the discreet centre in Geneva tops the list of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ contributions to international foundations, think tanks and research institutions. 

This also means that it has been caught on the Storting’s radar when the Control and Constitutional Committee is to examine the ministry’s aid portfolio. 

HD is also among the recipients of a type of grant that has not been subject to a call for applications and competition, according to a letter from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the committee. Barth Eide explains in the letter that this is the practice for certain actors who have “unique” roles and outstanding expertise in their fields. 

Criticism of top politicians’ board positions

Most recently, in the Storting’s debate on the new investigative commission on Tuesday this week, the Centre Party’s Geir Pollestad questioned the motive behind former Norwegian ministers sitting as private individuals “on the boards of Swiss foundations.”

VG and other Norwegian media reported in February that three high-ranking Norwegian foreign policy politicians had sat on HD’s board, appointed as private individuals. Conservative Party leader Ine Eriksen Søreide was until recently a board member of HD, while current Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide held such a position before 2021 – and before him former minister and state secretary Vidar Helgesen (H).

According to VG, Søreide failed to disclose the unpaid directorship in her reporting to the Storting’s register of directorships, which she herself explained was an oversight. 

The Red Party, for its part, has drawn HD into its critical argumentation about “elite diplomacy” and “foreign aristocracy” in connection with foreign service and peace assistance. The party has also questioned the secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding this type of assistance.

David Harland:

• David Harland (63) is a New Zealand diplomat who has been the Executive Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) since 2011.
• He has a background as a professor at Harvard University, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Conflict Prevention.
• Before joining HD, Harland was Director of the Europe and Latin America Division of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (2006–2011), where he led the winding down of the UN Transitional Administration in Kosovo.
• He served in UN peacekeeping missions in Haiti (2010), Kosovo (2008), East Timor (1999–2000), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1993–1998). In 1999, he helped prepare the UN report on the Srebrenica massacre.  
• Harland was a witness for the prosecution in a number of cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
• He also sits on the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Committee on Mediation.

Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue:

• The Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) was established as a non-profit foundation in 1999 with the mission of preventing and resolving armed conflicts around the world through mediation and discreet diplomacy.
• At the start and in the first decade, Norway was by far the foundation’s largest financial sponsor.
• HD is an international organisation based on principles of humanity, impartiality and independence.
• The foundation, headquartered in Geneva, runs mediation and peacebuilding projects in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America, and most of the more than 300 employees are affiliated with local offices in these regions.
• It works with the United Nations, regional organisations, governments, civil society groups, and other partners to mediate between conflict parties, support peace negotiations, and strengthen the mediation efforts of others. The centre also supports local communities and marginalised groups in playing active roles in peace processes.
• HD also supports humanitarian efforts by helping to ensure the safe delivery of aid in high-risk areas, and has expanded thematic mediation around the environment, digital technology, inclusion and crime as factors that intensify and complicate many conflicts.
• The media has previously reported that Ine Eriksen Søreide (H), Vidar Helgesen (H), and Espen Barth Eide (Ap) have served on HD’s board as private individuals. The positions were unpaid.
• Alongside early partners such as Switzerland, Norway and Sweden, HD’s donors now include Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, the UK, Australia, Ireland and others, along with the multilateral bodies of the EU and the UN. HD also receives funding from philanthropic foundations and other private donors.
• In 2025, Norway was the organisation’s fourth largest financial supporter.