The High North Civil Preparedness Forum is a three-year, EU-funded project lead by the High North Cooperation. The project aims to strengthen interregional collaboration within civil preparedness in northern Finland, Sweden and Norway. The target groups for the project’s activities are key civil preparedness stakeholders in the in the region, such as municipalities, agencies, and volunteer organisations.
The project will annually arrange an international cooperation course (ICC) focusing on one of NATO’s seven civilian baseline requirements. The first course, in the fall of 2025, will focus the third baseline requirement: managing uncontrolled movements of people. In addition to the courses, the project includes two networks, one for actors in the field of healthcare and mass casualty management, and one so-called Border Rescue Council.
The purpose of host nation support (HNS) is to enable international civilian and military actors to operate on, or move through, a country’s territory. Within the project, the actors will share experiences from previous work with HNS in each country, carry out knowledge-building activities, and investigate how we can collaborate during ongoing HNS operations across national borders.
All three countries are already working today to analyze and assess risks within their geographical area. Within the project, we will investigate opportunities to harmonize methods used for risk assessment, and to make a joint risk assessment for the High North region.
Undue information influence and influence campaigns are above all a threat to democracy and free opinion formation. In the project, we will increase knowledge in the area and identify how we, within the three countries, can jointly counteract information influence and, among other things, develop a strategy for this.
Before the final report of the project in 2028, there will also be an action plan that describes how the work in different areas will continue after the end of the project.
Project coordinator: Linda Hällgren
June 10, 2026 — The inaugural meeting of the Mass Casualty Incident Management Network brought together healthcare and emergency management professionals from Norway, Sweden and Finland to strengthen cross-border cooperation and improve preparedness for major incidents.
In early June, communication professionals from the High North Cooperation (HNC) travelled to Riga to attend the Riga StratCom Dialogue 2026. The delegation also had the opportunity to visit NATO StratCom Centre of Excellence to learn more about the centre and discuss a strategy for countering information influence in the HNC region. The week in Riga offered valuable opportunities for networking with communication experts from all over the world, as well as within the HNC group.
Our webinar series concludes in May with a high-profile final session featuring Martha Turnbull, Director of the Hybrid Influence Community of Interest at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats.
