Margareta Wahlström

Margareta Wahlström (born 30 March 1950) is a Swedish diplomat and social scientist who has held leading positions in the Red Cross and the United Nations.

[2] After Vietnam, she moved to neighbouring Cambodia where she joined the refugee organization UNHCR where she was charged with investigating security.

Unable to spend all her time in the university library, she soon took up a new post with the Swedish Red Cross as an administrator in South Africa during the final years of apartheid.

In 1989, this led to a position with the International Red Cross in Geneva as Desk Officer for Southern Africa with assignments in Angola and Cambodia.

[2] Once again preferring to work in the field rather than in a desk job, Wahlström moved to Afghanistan on a UN assignment aimed at reconstructing the country as part of its disaster recovery agenda.