Gro Harlem Brundtland

Biography

Gro Harlem was born in 1939, the daughter of the physician and Labour politician Gudmund Harlem. She qualified as a doctor at the University of Oslo in 1963 and took a master's in public health at Harvard in 1965, then worked for Norway's Directorate of Health and Oslo's school health service.

She entered government in 1974 as minister of the environment. In February 1981 she became Norway's first female prime minister and, the same year, leader of the Labour Party, which she led until 1992. Her first government lasted only until October 1981, but she returned for 1986-1989, with a cabinet nearly half female, and again from 1990 to 1996. During her third term Norway hosted the secret talks that led to the Oslo Accords, and she campaigned for EU membership in the 1994 referendum, which was lost.

From 1983 she chaired the UN World Commission on Environment and Development, whose 1987 report Our Common Future popularised the idea of sustainable development. After resigning as prime minister in 1996 she was Director-General of the World Health Organization from 1998 to 2003, where she pushed tobacco control and led the response to SARS.

She later served as a UN special envoy on climate change and as deputy chair of The Elders. She was on Utøya hours before the 2011 massacre, whose perpetrator later said she had been his main target.