A couple of questions from an interview in Billed Bladet #23, 2013.
Interviewer: Ulrik Ulriksen.
Where he talked with Mette-Marit about her work in connection with Women Deliver.
Q: Crown Princess Mette-Marit can you tell us a little about how you have experienced the Wome Deliver conference, which is about women's conditions and living condition globally?
MM: "This is an area and a subject I have been working with since 2001, when I married Crown Prince Haakon. Back then we focused on women's education globally and now in Norway.
This Women Deliver conference takes place in a time where there is a lot of success and progress in many areas in regards to women's rights and issues. Also even though we may not have gotten as far as we would wish in regards to some topics. That's why I think the conference takes place at a time when it is important to sit down and contemplate what we want further on.
To me, working with the issues around AIDS which has been one of my cardinal issues since 2001, it is important to acknowledge that we in this area has come very far indeed. At the same time there is (still) a long way to go before we can be satisfied. The financing of some projects has stagnated, so now it's about keeping up the pressure and continue financing the important projects we have in this field.
At the same time we see that organisations begins to realise the importance of working especially with the young, as I have done and has had as a main topic for a long time. Because we see now that the world populations is getting younger and younger and 46 % of newly infected with HIV and AIDS are among people under 26..
That means that we now have to adjust ourselves according to the developement. That is we have to direct our effort at the younger segments of the population, because they globally speaking are the hardest hit. We now learn that young women now carry so much of the burden and problems in regards to HIV and AIDS.
The image of HIV and AIDS has changed a lot from initially being an epedemic among men, who had sex with men. Now the typically HIV-infected is a young married woman from the area south of Sahara in Africa. That means that the image has changed tremendously and that AIDS genuinely go hand in hand with other challenges. For example women who are married early and who do not have the right to decide over their own body and who at the same time is subjected to violence.
All these things which ensure that women do not experience developement also means that you are more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS yourself".
Q: In 2003 you were on a fact finding trip to Malawi and you were so afflicted by your experiences that you in earnest decided to involve yourself even more in the work. How much have you yourself developed as a profile who is putting focus on a specific global health-related and social problem?
MM: "I have indeed developed a lot since back then, when I started working with this issue way back in 2001. I have learned enourmously. Now I feel that this is a topic that is under my skin.
I know a lot about the issue because I have worked with it for so long, but not least because because I have learned so much from those many young people I have met in connection with my work. If I must emphasize something that is important to me, it is to have followed so many of these young people over the years. That has given me so much quality in regards to the work I have been doing.
The young have given me the desire to intensify my work. Some of the young I have met, are perhaps some who have faced the biggest challenge in life - that is to get the diagnocis of having HIV or AIDS.
But they live with the diagnosis and they show the strength they themselves use to live with the diagnosis and to help other people in their local community. That I think is fantastic and that gives me so much joy. If they can, then I at least do something to put focus on the issue on the international arena.
After I went to Malawi in 2003, I also felt that this was something I had to work with, I couldn't just put the hard experiences away. I had to try and do just a little difference.
Now this has ended up as a life-long project for me. I will never stop my work on the HIV and AIDS problems".
- A very illuminating and meaningful interview that is of course longer than this, but I thought these two questions captured the essence.
