Born on 24 February 1961, Erna Solberg is the current Prime Minister of Norway and has been serving the office since 2013. She has been the leader of the Conservative Party since May 2004 and is also known as “THE IRON ERNA.”
She was born in Bergen; her father worked as a consultant in Bergen Sporvel, while her mother was an office worker. She has two sisters. In high school, she was elected to the board of school student union for Norway, and in the same year, she was a part of a charity event at a national scale where students collected money for Jamaica.
In 1996 she was married to a businessman and former conservative party politician Sindre Finnes, and they are parents to two children. In the years 1979–1983, she was a member of Bergen city, and she was also a member of the executive committee between 1987-1989. She was elected from Hordaland in 1989 to the parliament Storting and has been re-elected 5 times. She was the deputy leader of the Conservative party from 2002 to 2004, and in 2004 she was chosen as the leader of the Conservative party and has been the Prime minister of Norway since 2013.
Initiatives Taken By Erna Solberg
The prime minister is the most senior member of the government who is wholly responsible for the coordination and leadership of the government’s operations. She has held countless different positions of power throughout her career. She has done many important things for her country; she has supported the award of traditional values and security in the Parliamentary Assembly of Norway. As a co-chair, she dedicated herself to growing fair access to girls’ and children’s education in backward areas. Thus, the struggle between its goals provides quality education to the backward areas, especially girls and children. This was her most important work as a lawyer from 2013 to 2016.
She has made a very significant contribution in the field of education; she has provided financial support for the Global Partnership for Education. Apart from that, at Oslo in November 2018 for the good health of women and children, she also hosted the Global Finance Facility for health pledge Conference. She believes that if you invest in education, you will get a lot of benefits because only investment in education will give progress to all other goals; she describes education as the most crucial part of a person’s life.
In 2015 Ms. Solberg, Norway, committed to providing at least $6 million to better hygiene for approximately two billion people who needed it. This commitment may be different to education; however, many advanced and developing nations need sufficient hygiene, which frequently retains girls from attending school regularly.
In 2014 she launched $12.3 million programs to improve the quality of girls’ education in the country. It was launched in Malawi and has been successful till now, and is still running in 2021. It has been clear that Eren Solberg, since her appointment focused on uplifting girls in the country.
International Engagements And Her Visions For The World
She has championed transatlantic values and security as the Prime Minister and previous Chair of the Norwegian designation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In 2016, she gave a lecture at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Global Goals in Singapore, where she expressed ways to have a sustainable, fair, and more peaceful future for the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
She gave a speech on globalization and development in Beijing at Peking University in 2017.
In her speech to the UN General Assembly in 2019, she stood and asked for Norway’s candidacy for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council for 2021–2022. She expressed that the UN needs to be at its full strength, and the world needs strong cooperation and institutions to take on global challenges that are threatening to humankind, such as climate change, cybersecurity, and terrorism. She criticized the European court over retention of data which Telenor argued can be used without court proceedings.
She toured INDIA and discussed with the Prime Minister of India, Mr. NARENDRA MODI, about trade relations, the blue economy, ocean resources, and renewable energy, and with the signing of an MoU during the visit to an Ocean Dialogue and a Joint Task Force on Blue Economy was established.
She started a business seminar coordinated by Innovation Norway and endorsed 15 fruitful agreements among Norwegian and Indian organizations during her visit, where Ms. Solberg led a 140-member strong business delegation from Norway, which is the second-largest ever. Solberg has also tried to maintain China-Norway relations by engaging with them.
Achievements Of Erna Solberg
- For her International engagement, she was awarded the Inaugural Global citizen award in 2018.
- Since 2016 she has chaired the UN Secretary Advocacy group for sustainable development.
- She was the leader of the Conservative Women’s Association from 1993 to 1998.
- In 2018 she held a global high-level panel for sustainable ocean economy where she introduced the topic at the G7 summit.
- Solberg was the country’s first conservative leader to win re-election since the 1980s when the government was re-elected in 2017.
- She served as the minister of local government and regional development. Her tough policies in the department earned her the nickname “JERN ERNA” or “IRON ERNA.”
- In recent years, Norway has notably bolstered its presence in India taking its relationship with India to new heights. The Norwegian government’s official trade representative, Innovative Norway, has also opened its offices in both the financial capital and the national capital of INDIA.
- The Norwegian government launched a new ‘India Strategy’ in December 2018. The strategy sets clear priorities for the Norwegian government until 2030 and gives renewed impetus to develop our bilateral cooperation.
- The India Strategy outlines five thematic priorities:
- Democracy and a rules-based world order
- The oceans
- Energy
- Climate and Environment
- Research, higher education, and global health
- To achieve these goals, Norway focuses on political contact and cooperation with India and hopes to achieve more sustainability on its economic front with maximal cooperation with the Indian government.