The Position and Role of ICEIDA Unchanged According to a New Bill

Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, the Minister for Foreign Affair, presented a new bill today regarding Iceland’s international development cooperation. According to the bill, the position and role of ICEIDA will be unchanged but a special law concerning the agency from 1981 will be revoked.

Ingibjörg Sólrún said that the bill contained the first comprehensive legislation regarding all of Iceland’s official development cooperation and with that a new foundation would be laid for a new comprehensive administration concerning the issue and at the same time for a transparent and responsible administration.

The bill includes that the position of ICEIDA as a sub-agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affair will not change and ICEIDA’s role of only dealing with Iceland’s bilateral development cooperation under the authority of the Minister for Foreign Affair will also not change. On the other hand, a special board of ICEIDA is not included but instead a governing group which would have the role of dealing with professional policy making as well as supervision over daily operations and management. The governing group would be under the command of the Permanent Secretary of State but would include, according to the bill, the General Director of ICEIDA, the Director General of the Directorate for International and Security Affairs at the ministry and directors of the Department for International Development and the Icelandic Crisis Response Unit.

The bill and the exposition can be found on the Parliament’s website, www.althingi.is