To date, 27 countries have recognized the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide against the Ukrainian people. This is what Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba informs about on Twitter.

"By November 2022, 15 countries had recognized the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people. Since then, 12 more have joined. I thank them for hearing our requests and inviting others to join. Recognition honors victims and warns future generations to prevent genocide,” he wrote.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on all the world's democratic countries to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide against the Ukrainian people. This emphasizes how important it is and what it means to Ukrainian descendants.

On 30 August this year, we will put this back on the agenda in Oslo.  Together with the Ukrainian Embassy, we will arrange a Holodomor conference. There will also be participation from Ukraine.

Earlier this year, the Progress Party put forward a representative proposal to the Storting to recognize the Holodomor genocide, but only received support from the MDG.

On 31.1.23, together with the Ukrainian Embassy, we had a cross-political meeting at the Storting and then gained a full understanding of the historical facts, and the representatives took responsibility for making the Holodomor better known in Norwegian society. Now during the conference 30.8. with the theme of the Holodomor in Oslo, they have the opportunity, and all parties in the Storting are invited to participate in the panel debate.

Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Ap) stated earlier this year that the government does not recognize "the abuse and suffering that the population of Ukraine suffered under Soviet rule", but at the same time states two reasons why the government will nevertheless refrain from defining the Holodomor as genocide:

1) such should be left to historians or judges in relevant courts, not to political authorities.
2) that genocide as a legal term was only introduced in 1948, i.e. around 15 years after the events in Ukraine, which would mean giving international law norms retroactive effect.

Historian Bård Larsen will also introduce our conference, and he stated shortly after: - The problem with this line of argument is that it is at best very imprecise, at worst untrue. In its most absurd form, one can argue that the Holocaust was not genocide either, since this occurred several years before the Genocide Convention entered into force.

We in s2pU have been in contact with German politicians who made a politically responsible decision, and they emphasize that there is no problem in making political recognition. In the discussions before the vote, Michael Brand of the center-right Christian Democratic Party said that the Germans are already historically guilty with regard to Ukraine. “If we close our eyes now, we will be doubly guilty," he added.

Why does Norway not recognize a genocide of the Ukrainian people, the question we have not received an answer to. Nor does it look like those who voted against have the courage to stand at the conference at the end of August.

However, the rest of the world recognizes the Holodomor genocide politically and some Norwegian municipalities, including Lyngdal and Farsund, have also taken political responsibility. Our message and questions on 30.8. in Gamle Festsal at the University of Oslo is "Is it a political responsibility to recognize the Holodomor genocide, and will it be possible to prevent new genocides by placing responsibility where it belongs?"