{"id":1994,"date":"2024-09-20T09:57:57","date_gmt":"2024-09-20T06:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/?p=1994"},"modified":"2024-09-20T09:57:57","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T06:57:57","slug":"finlands-development-aid-plunges-amid-far-right-take-over-of-policy-agendas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/?p=1994","title":{"rendered":"Finland\u2019s Development Aid Plunges amid Far-Right Take-Over of Policy Agendas"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eija Ranta and Martta Kaskinen<\/em> \/ Originally published by EADI<\/a> as part of the European Development Policy Outlook Series<\/a><\/p>\n

The boost in popularity of the populist right-wing Finns party has meant a bumpy ride for Finland\u2019s development affairs. With far-right extremists in the government, Finland\u2019s development aid is plunging. In this blog post, we recall the historical peculiarities of Finland\u2019s path from an aid recipient to becoming an international development donor and shed light on the contemporary challenges and controversies of Finland\u2019s stance to development issues,\u00a0demonstrating a drastic change to earlier commitments. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

From Aid Recipient to a Nordic Donor<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In the 1960s, when Finland started its first bilateral development cooperation projects in North Africa, it was itself still the recipient of international humanitarian aid and World Bank development loans. Finland\u2019s largest development NGO, the Finn Church Aid, was established in 1947 to receive and implement foreign aid in Finland, while during the 1960s, it started to operate internationally at alongside some other NGOs, such as the Finnish\/Nordic Red Cross.<\/p>\n

Even though Finland could not accept the US Marshall aid due to the pressure from the Soviet Union, some international organizations supported the return of Finnish and S\u00e1mi refugees and the post-war reconstruction, including the repatriation of more than 400,000 Karelians from the territories lost to the Soviet Union in the Winter War. Between 1947-1955, Unicef supported child nutrition and health in Finland.<\/p>\n

During the 1960s, sociologists and historians still called Lapland and Eastern Finland \u201cdeveloping regions\u201d. Yet, Finland\u2019s process of modernization and towards becoming a welfare state was off to a good start.<\/p>\n

The Cold War Balancing<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As the only non-communist neighbor on the Western borders of the Soviet Union, and with the urge to maintain its independence, Finland had a strong foreign policy impetus to identify and collaborate with other Nordic countries. Through them, Finland had contact with the Western Bloc, while also responding to Soviet interests, as dictated by the Finno-Soviet Treaty (1948).<\/p>\n

Development cooperation became one of the policy areas in which Finland could cooperate with the Western Bloc, as economic and military alliances were off the table. It served Finland\u2019s foreign policy interests in the geopolitics of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

During the non-alignment era, Finland\u2019s development aid was directed equally at capitalist and socialist countries. If Nyerere\u2019s Ujamaa socialism in Tanzania was supported, then Kenyatta\u2019s modernization agendas in Kenya were as well.<\/p>\n

The long-term President Urho Kekkonen suggested that having been an impoverished periphery of Sweden and Russia with recent success in gaining independence, Finland could easily relate to decolonization struggles in Africa and elsewhere, and to support their cause.<\/p>\n

Funding and Thematic Priorities<\/strong><\/h3>\n

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Finland\u2019s European Union membership in 1995, Finland became committed to the EU development policy, as part of the EU\u2019s common foreign and security policy.<\/p>\n

During the economic recession in the early 1990s, combined with the collapse of GNI, Finland temporarily reached the goal of 0.7 per cent of GNI for the development cooperation budget. In general, however, Finland\u2019s development cooperation funding was relatively low during the 1990s. From the early 2000s, development funding started to grow, gaining its peak in 2014 (0.59 per cent of GNI), after which it drastically collapsed. In recent years, the share has been roughly 0.4 to 0.5 per cent of GNI.<\/p>\n

Until the 2010s, Finland had three equally strong political parties \u2013 the Social Democratic Party (left), the Centre Party, and the National Coalition Party (right), and several smaller ones. The coalition governments aimed at consensus decision-making and maintaining the welfare state. Until the 2023 parliamentary elections, there had never been an entirely right-wing (or left-wing) government.<\/p>\n

All traditional political parties used to be committed to development policy and cooperation. However, all of them have relatively easily cut back on development funding whenever the economy has declined.<\/p>\n

While funding budgets have gone up and down, Finland\u2019s thematic priorities have remained quite steady, and included poverty reduction, human rights, and sustainable development. Gender equality has been among Finland\u2019s development goals for decades. In 2016, strengthening the status and rights of women and girls became for the first time the top priority area. This surprised many, as the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was led by Timo Soini, a populist leader of the Finns Party and known, for example, for his anti-abortion agendas.<\/p>\n

The Finns Party Populism<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The Finns Party\u2019s emergence to Finnish politics has had an enormous impact on political rhetoric, political alliances, value base, and funding allocations. Until the early 2010s, the Finns Party was a marginal centrist anti-EU populist party, which argued to defend the causes of the \u201cordinary people\u201d, mainly in peripheral rural areas.<\/p>\n

In 2011, however, it had a surprising landslide support in the parliamentary elections, mainly due to its anti-immigration, anti-EU, and anti-elite rhetoric.<\/p>\n

On the eve of the European refugee crisis in 2015, the Finns Party became part of the coalition government for the first time. The following years saw rapid and dramatic cuts to development aid, including 59 per cent cuts to multilateral aid and 39 per cent cuts to NGO funding, just to mention a few. Furthermore, massive funds were transferred from traditional aid to Finnfund, a Finnish development investment company.<\/p>\n

This was a major shock to the development sector. Many bilateral programs were abruptly ended, and NGOs reduced their staff and country programs. The number of Finnish NGOs running development projects collapsed drastically.<\/p>\n

In 2017, the Finns Party split into two: the more moderate center populists remained in the minority, while anti-immigration and far-right segments became a clear majority. The Finns Party activists and politicians were seen in neo-Nazi events and demonstrations. Many Finns Party politicians, including the current Speaker of the Parliament of Finland Jussi Halla-aho, were convicted of hate speech and ethnic agitation.<\/p>\n

All other political parties withdrew from collaborating with them. However, little by little anti-immigration discourses, conspiracy theories, and hate speech, spread by the Finns Party representatives, have become increasingly normalized in the Finnish society, including other political parties and the media.<\/p>\n

Far-Right Triumphs during the Ukraine War<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The national security threats induced by Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine in 2022 gave immediate leverage for the Finns Party to push their far-right policy agendas. While the previous refugee crisis had generated a racist backlash agitated by the Finns Party, Ukrainian refugees were welcomed across the political spectrum. This revealed the racialized attitudes towards international assistance.<\/p>\n

After Finland became a full member of NATO in 2023, the country\u2019s new prime minister Petteri Orpo from the National Coalition Party formed a government which, for the first time in history, consists exclusively of right-wing members.<\/p>\n

The new government responded to \u00a0civil society\u2019s fears in 2024 as it announced substantial budget cuts to development cooperation, among cuts to social and health sectors which have destabilized the welfare state. Development cooperation is also to be restructured so that proportionally more funds will be allocated to Ukraine, while for example, four bilateral country programs in Africa and Asia will end.<\/p>\n

Ville Tavio, the minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, described the long-term development policy trajectory as one towards \u201ctrade relations that benefit Finnish enterprises\u201d. This is in harsh contrast with the broader objectives within the Finnish development sector, which has increasingly engaged with discussions on decolonising development.<\/p>\n

The government also seized funding from development communication and global education. In the upcoming years, development NGOs will have an increasingly important role in channeling knowledge about topics related to global development to the Finnish public. This is highly problematic, as the continuous trend of budget cuts is pushing organizations to prioritize their own fundraising needs, often at the expense of global education.<\/p>\n

Public funding to peace organizations and human rights institutions have also been drastically cut.<\/p>\n

The significant recent changes in the political atmosphere, combined with the immediate security threat posed by neighboring Russia, have dramatically reshaped Finnish development policy. If still back in 2010 Finnish development cooperation was intrinsically about eradicating poverty and promoting equality, today it is more explicitly about securing the country\u2019s self-interests in terms of markets and security.<\/p>\n

Eija Ranta<\/strong>\u00a0is Academy Research Fellow of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki<\/p>\n

Martta Kaskinen\u00a0<\/strong>Is Doctoral Researcher in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eija Ranta and Martta Kaskinen \/ Originally published by EADI as part of the European Development Policy Outlook Series The boost in popularity of the populist right-wing Finns party has meant a bumpy ride for Finland\u2019s development affairs. With far-right extremists in the government, Finland\u2019s development aid is plunging. In this blog post, we …<\/p>\n

Finland\u2019s Development Aid Plunges amid Far-Right Take-Over of Policy Agendas<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1997,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions\/1997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}