The 2025 ICORN lecture by Jan Egeland: We must defend fundamental freedoms in a world falling apart

By: Jan Egeland, Stavanger, 19 September 2025

We meet here in the wonderfully restored Stavanger Cathedral, with roots in medieval times. Our quest is to protect and promote fundamental freedoms that came centuries later with the enlightenment period and the legislation of modern, global human rights.

Today, I am proud to see that Stavanger is on the forefront of the fight to protect and promote freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of belief.

Today the city and our country enjoy a high degree of respect for and guarantees of these fundamental human rights, - which in turn is tied to the rule of law and the protection against unlawful detention, repression and violence.

It was not always so, as these ancient stones have witnessed:

the first Bishop of Stavanger, Reinald, important for the building of the church, was hung by the Viking King Harald Gille in Bergen in 1135, on the accusation of hiding the riches of another Viking King.

In 1205 the representative of King Sverre, Einar Kongsmåg, sought refuge in the Western Tower in this church from the armed bands called Baglerne, associated with the Archbishop of Norway, but when promised safe passage and leaving the church he was killed.

The last Catholic Bishop in this cathedral, Hoskuld, was detained during the protestant reformation, taken to Bergen and died in detention.

So, for hundreds of years these walls and the neighbouring Cathedral School, where many of us studied, saw fear, repression and arbitrary arrest and detention. The last period was of course the Nazi German occupation from 1940-45, only a couple of generations ago, when many Norwegian freedom fighters were detained, tortured and executed.

My point for all of this is that, as my parents taught me:

‍We can in no way take for granted that the freedom of expression, belief and assembly that the good people of Stavanger and Norway exercise every single day will be guaranteed forever.

The very existence of ICORN, proves to us that in the world of today too many communities and too many artists, writers, journalists and others live in the fear and under the same brutality that this Church witnessed in previous centuries.

It should thus be a pride for all in Stavanger that the city hosts the ICORN network of 89 fellow human-rights-promoting cities across Europe and North America that host more than 350 human rights defenders and have done so for 20 years.

Freedom of expression and assembly is in 2025 under attack in too many countries. We must renew our fight for these fundamental human rights. Nearly every year for the last two decades, we have seen more countries regress than improve in providing freedom to their citizens.

This decline in political rights, democracy and civil liberties came after a period of great progress for freedom in the world symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

When I was a pupil at the Cathedral School, Kongsgaard, next door, in the 1970s, democracies were in a clear minority world-wide and dictatorships and authoritarian regimes were in the majority. Eastern Europe and the then Soviet Union were under Communist rule and most of Latin America and much of Africa and Asia were under military dictatorships.

We formed an Amnesty International group among the student and adopted “prisoners of conscience”, as they were called, detained arbitrarily in psychiatric institutions in the Soviet Union and under torture in the prisons of the military juntas of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.

And then came the gigantic leap forward for democracy when Communist and military dictatorships collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

I was convinced then that we would be on a long and irreversible road towards increased global respect for human rights.

As a Europe Director in Human Rights Watch in 2011 and 2012 I hoped the Arab Spring was part of this decline of the authoritarian rule, and the old, repressive men would have to give way to young, hopeful democracies.

I was wrong. The Arab Spring was crushed in one country after the other, and we saw more violence, repression and war from Syria to Yemen, from Egypt to Tunisia. In Eastern Europe Russia and other countries became increasingly authoritarian. In Latin America, Africa and Asia we saw similar tendencies.

It led to more persecution of writes, reporters and human rights activist that had to flee for ICORN cities, if they were lucky. Most fled to dangerous and miserable camps.  If they were in the Middle East or North Africa some had no option, but go for the life-dangerous journey across the Mediterranean towards a Europe that has become increasingly hostile to migrants and asylum seekers.

At the beginning of this year, Freedom House took stock and measured the respect for 25 political rights and civil liberties across 195 countries. There is still a majority, 85 nations, that can be considered as largely “free”, 51 are in a middle, authoritarian category or “partially free”, and as many as 59 countries are now “not free”, or, bluntly put, dictatorships.  Each year since 2006 there has been more countries moving in the wrong direction from protection of human rights to violation of fundamental freedoms.

This is an extremely worrisome even beyond the realm of democracy and the rule of law.

I have now been a humanitarian, human rights or conflict resolution worker for 40 years and have seen how our success in bringing relief, development and protection to civilian populations in great need is connected to whether journalists, writers and artists are able to work freely.

The regression of freedoms is also tied to a surge in new and protracted armed conflicts on several continents.

2024 thus saw the highest number of state-based armed conflicts in over seven decades. 61 conflicts were recorded across 36 countries last year.

My organisation, the Norwegian Refugee Council, has nearly 15.000 field workers providing relief to nearly ten million refugees and displaced. My colleagues see more crossfire, more extreme armed actors, and the number of people displaced by war and violence increase from around 40 million in 2010 to more than 120 million today. This is a threefold increase in people fleeing for their lives worldwide in 15 years.

More war results in many more in need globally: 300 million world-wide desperately need our aid. But because the world’s many rich nations at the same time cut back on their aid, led by the Trump administration, only 114 million have been selected for aid – and not even those will get it:  so far this year only USD 8.5 billion of the more than USD 45 billion requested for humanitarian aid has been committed for aid work.

And then many of these conflict stricken population are equally hurt by the climate emergency. 42 out of 45 countries that saw conflict last year also had people fleeing natural disasters.  

So, what needs to be done? We need to reverse the declining trust in the multilateral global order and make peace diplomacy and climate change efforts great again. Norway has resources, connections and possibilities to lead on many fronts in this good fight.

It is therefore too bad that in the election campaign we just lived through most attention was on how the most privileged people on earth can be even more prosperous and safe.  Initiatives for increased international solidarity and compassion was largely missing.

One example is the drastic cuts in the Norwegian refugee quota. Norway has, for more than a generation, given protection to people selected by UNHCR and in desperate need for asylum in a safe place. The UN and my own organisation NRC argued that it should be 5000 per year, but the political compromise in the Storting was approximately 3000 per year until 2023. In 2025, where the need is greater than ever, the Norwegian quota is 500, or just over one person per municipality. At the same time the number of asylum seekers beyond Ukraine is also dramatically down. It is nearly impossible for anyone fleeing to make it to Norway. That’s why we again need to increase the annual quota for refugees.

And we must end impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attacks against journalists and aid workers.  

This year is on track to be the deadliest on record in humanitarian work, with 265 aid workers already killed in deliberate attacks. Since 2022, the number of aid workers killed annually has more than doubled. The increase has largely been driven by the Israeli military’s attacks on aid workers in Gaza. Since 7 October 2023, at least 508 aid workers have been killed in Gaza. Most of them are our colleagues in the UN organisation for Palestinians, UNRWA.

In parallel, attacks on journalists continue to grow. More journalists were killed in 2024 than in any other year since the Committee to Protect Journalists began collecting data more than three decades ago. At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinian media staff killed by Israel.

As aid workers we need journalists, writes and artist to be witnesses, with us, of the truth of what is happening where lives are at stake.

When Israel blocks access for all international media in Gaza and then targets Palestinian local media, who will then be able to give honest reporting of what happens with the civilian population and with our aid workers and the population we serve that is being deliberately starved?

With relations between great powers in the deep freezer and the West against Russia, and the US against China, we who work in humanitarian and human rights work have no help from a paralyzed UN Security Council. But we cannot and will not give up.

We can all do more in this battle of values and for the defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It is a struggle we cannot loose and which we can and must win.

I am proud my old town, Stavanger has played an important role and can and will play an import role in all of this.  In the 1990s I was a young State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and was glad to see the free radio stations for Nigeria, for Burma/Myanmar and for other dictatorships at the time could broadcast from Stavanger and use the short-wave station of Kvitsøy here in Rogaland.

And now this town is a free and protected space for those who need refuge from repression. It can also be a place that speak truth to power and make sure Norway energizes our solidarity with the world most betrodden. It is a city much richer than when I grew up here. So, it really should not be all about how we can continue increasing our own prosperity.

Now the work continues more systematic and more effective then ever before.  Stavanger has always been a town that has looked outwards. A city of shipping, of commerce, of expeditions and of migration to America and elsewhere.

The world’s most privileged and peaceful nation, that has become rich from trading with the rest of the world, should be among the first to stand up for universal rights.

I am sure Stavanger will continue to do so. If not us, who can and will?