A/HRC/43/41/Add.3 Annex Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities on her visit to Norway I. Introduction A. Programme of the visit 1. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities visited Norway, at the invitation of the Government, from 2 to 11 October 2019. She met with the Ministers of Culture, Education, Foreign Affairs and Health and Care Services; the State Secretaries for the Elderly and Public Health, Justice and Public Security and Labour and Social Affairs; representatives of the Ministries of Local Government and Modernization and of Foreign Affairs, of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and of Statistics Norway; the County Governor of Tromsø and Finnmark, the Deputy County Governor of Oslo and Akershus, and other central, county and municipal authorities. She met the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, parliamentarians, a member of the Sámi Parliament and Sámi Council, the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud, the Director of the Equality and AntiDiscrimination Tribunal, the Parliamentary Ombud, representatives of the Norwegian National Human Rights Institution and of the Ombudsman for Children, the Health and Social Services Ombudsman for Oslo, and a wide range of organizations of persons with disabilities and other civil society groups. 2. The Special Rapporteur travelled to Tromsø, Karasjok and to the municipalities of Asker and Bærum near Oslo. She visited the regional section for mental health, intellectual disabilities and autism of Dikemark Psychiatric Hospital in Asker, the Åsgård Psychiatric Hospital in Tromsø, the basalt exposure therapy department of Vestre Viken Hospital Trust in Blakstad, the residential facilities for persons with intellectual disabilities Emma Hjorth in Sandvika and Borgenbråten in Borgen, the Haug special school and resource centre in Bekkestua, the Manglerud school in Oslo and the sheltered workshop Fossheim in Oslo. 3. The Special Rapporteur thanks the Government of Norway for the transparency, openness and excellent cooperation extended to her prior to and during the visit. She particularly thanks all the persons with disabilities who shared their situations, concerns and desire for change, including children and youth with disabilities. B. Context 4. Norway is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy and the legislative powers are vested in a unicameral parliament, the Storting. It is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a member of many multilateral organizations, including the United Nations, the Arctic Council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 5. Norway ranked first out of 189 countries and territories in the 2017 human development index, classifying it in the very high human development category. The gross domestic product in Norway was worth $434.167 billion in 2018, while the value per capita stood at $81,697. 1 Norway also ranks first in the World Economic Forum Inclusive Development Index. That made it the best performing advanced economy in 2018. 2 The poverty rate is low, calculated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and 1 2 2 See https://data.worldbank.org/country/norway and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD. See Inclusive Development Index 2018, summary and data highlights, p. 3.