She most recently served as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan, completing her term in July 2014 [2] Born in Arusha, Taganyika (modern-day Tanzania) to parents who worked for the Norwegian Missionary Society, she came to Norway at the age of 7.

In 1998, Johnson initiated the Utstein-group, a group of key likeminded development ministers from the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Norway to spearhead this agenda.

In this capacity she was in charge of global partnerships and the organization’s humanitarian operations and crisis response all over the world and worked closely with the heads of UN-agencies and NGOs to improve delivery on the ground.

Following her assignment in South Sudan, Johnson served as a member of the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) (2014-2015) [6] and was a Senior Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) (2015).

Other publications: Johnson, Hilde Frafjord: “Protection of Civilians in the United Nations: A peacekeeping illusion?”, article in Cedric de Cloning & Mateja Peter: “United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order”, September 2001 Johnson, Hilde: «Dilemmas in Development: Forms of peasant resistance among the Fipa in Rukwa, Tanzania”, thesis, University of Oslo, Jan 1991.