Hilde Frafjord Johnson

Hilde Frafjord Johnson was Norway’s Minister of International Development for two terms (1997-2005), focusing on peacebuilding efforts in conflict-affected countries, e.g. the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes, Afghanistan and Timor Leste. She played a key role in the negotiations that led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Sudan in 2005. Ms Johnson later served as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) and Head of UNMISS in South Sudan. She was subsequently a member of the UN SG’s High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, HIPPO (2015-2015), and led the later UN police review. Prior to her tenure in South Sudan, Ms Johnson was Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, in charge of humanitarian operations and crisis response (2007-2011).

Ms Johnson is an author of three books on Sudan, South Sudan, peace processes and peace building, and has been a visiting fellow/guest researcher at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) 2014-2015 and the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) and is now Senior Advisor at the European Institute for Peace (EIP) in Brussels.

As part of her political career Ms Johnson was an elected member of Parliament from 1993-2001 and completed her tenure as Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Party of Norway in 2019.

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