Hilde F. Johnson served as Norway’s Minister of International Development for two terms (1997-2005) where she engaged in high level peacebuilding efforts in relation to number of conflict-affected countries including on the Horn of Africa and in the Great Lakes, Afghanistan and Timor Leste. She is also a former high level UN diplomat (2007 - 2014).

Most importantly, Ms. Johnson played a key role in the Sudan peace negotiations that led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005. Ms. Johnson later served as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) and head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) 2011 - 2014. She was subsequently a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, HIPPO (2015-2015), and a Co-Chair of the independent UN police review (2016).

Prior to her tenure in South Sudan, Ms. Johnson was Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in charge of the organization’s humanitarian operations and crisis response (2007-2011).

As Senior Adviser to the President of the African Development Bank, she led the development of the Bank’s fragile states strategy and policies (2006-2007).

As a development anthropologist, fragile states specialist, and an author of three books on Sudan, South Sudan, peace processes and peace building, Hilde F. Johnson also has an academic background. She was a Senior visiting fellow at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) 2014-2015 and a Practitioner in Residence at the Norwegian Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in Oslo (2019). Hilde F. Johnson is currently Senior Advisor at the European Institute for Peace (EIP) in Brussels and a Visiting Researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO).

As part of her political career in Norway Hilde Frafjord Johnson was also an elected member of Parliament from 1993-2001 and has just completed her tenure as Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Party of Norway (2016-2019).