Gro Harlem Brundtland
Gro Brundtland (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɡruː ˈhɑ̀ːlɛm ˈbrʉ̀ntlɑnː]; born Gro Harlem, 20 April 1939) is a Norwegian politician (Arbeiderpartiet),[1] who served three terms as the 29th prime minister of Norway (1981, 1986–1989, and 1990–1996), as the leader of the Labour Party from 1981 to 1992, and as the director-general of the World Health Organization from 1998 to 2003. She is also known for having chaired the Brundtland Commission which presented the Brundtland Report on sustainable development.
Gro Harlem Brundtland
Olav V
Jan P. Syse
Olav V
Kåre Willoch
Thorbjørn Jagland
Trygve Bratteli
Odvar Nordli
Sissel Rønbeck
Ivar Ødegaard
Marit Nybakk
Bjørn Tore Godal
Rune E. Kristiansen
Arne Olav Brundtland
4
Educated as a physician, Brundtland joined the Labour Party and entered the government in 1974 as Minister of the Environment. She became the first female prime minister of Norway[1] on 4 February 1981, but left office on 14 October 1981; she returned as prime minister on 9 May 1986 and served until 16 October 1989. She finally returned for her third term on 3 November 1990. After her surprise resignation as prime minister in 1996, she became an international leader in sustainable development and public health, and served as Director-General of the World Health Organization and as UN Special Envoy on Climate Change from 2007 to 2010.[2] She is also deputy chair of The Elders and a former vice-president of Socialist International.
Brundtland belonged to the moderate wing of her party and supported Norwegian membership in the European Union during the 1994 referendum. As prime minister, Brundtland became widely known as the "mother of the nation".[3] Brundtland received the 1994 Charlemagne Prize, and has received many other awards and recognitions.
Early life[edit]
Brundtland was born in Oslo in 1939, the daughter of physician and politician Gudmund Harlem and Inga Margareta Elisabet Brynolf (1918–2005). She has a younger brother, Lars and a younger sister, Hanne.
In 1963, Brundtland graduated with a medical degree, a cand.med. from the University of Oslo. She took her master's degree at Harvard University in 1965, as a Master of Public Health.
From 1966 to 1969, she worked as a physician at the Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet), and from 1969 she worked as a doctor in Oslo's public school health service.
Assassination attempt[edit]
Brundtland narrowly escaped assassination by Anders Behring Breivik on 22 July 2011. She had been on the island of Utøya hours before the massacre there to give a speech to the AUF camp; Breivik stated that he originally intended Brundtland to be the main target of the attack (along with Eskil Pedersen and Jonas Gahr Støre), but he had been delayed while travelling from Oslo.[17][18] Breivik arrived on Utøya about two hours after Brundtland had left.
During his trial in 2012, Breivik revealed detailed assassination plans for Brundtland.[19] He told the court that he had planned to handcuff her and then record himself reading out a prepared text detailing her "crimes", before decapitating her on camera using a bayonet and uploading the footage to the internet. Breivik said that while Brundtland had been his main target, he had still planned to massacre everyone else on the island.[20]
Brundtland has received many awards and honours, including
