2026
His Excellency Mr. Espen Barth Eide is the Foreign Minister of Norway. Espen Barth Eide became Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on 16 October 2023. From 14 October 2021 he was Minister of Climate and Environment. He is elected to the Norwegian Parliament as a representative from Oslo. From 2017-2021, he was a Member of Parliament and the Norwegian Labour Party’s Climate and Energy spokesperson. He was reelected to the Parliament for the 2021-2025 legislative term, representing Oslo.
In the two Stoltenberg Governments, Mr. Eide occupied many prominent positions: Foreign Minister from 2012 to 2013, Minister of Defense from 2011 to 2012, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2011, State Secretary for Defense from 2005 to 2010 and State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 2000-2001.
Mr. Eide was Managing Director and Member of the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum in Geneva from 2014 to 2016. Furthermore, he served as UN Under-Secretary General and the Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus (2014-2017), chairing the negotiations aiming at reunification of the divided island. For over a decade (2001-2013), he was a Vice President of the Party of European Socialists (the association of European Social Democratic parties).
In his academic career, Mr. Eide, a political scientist, worked as a senior fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) from 1993 to 2000 and again from 2002 to 2005, specializing on international security, European integration, defense and international relations. During his tenure at NUPI, he was deeply involved in several UN, EU and NATOrelated processes.
Mr. Eide was acting Secretary-General of the Norwegian European Movement in 1991-1993. Until October 2021, Mr. Eide was the Chair of the Board of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, a peace mediation organization, Board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Board member of the Norwegian Atlantic Committee, senior adviser to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington (CSIS) and a member of the European Leadership Network in London.
Anita Pratap is an award-winning international journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, having worked in Asia, Middle East, Europe and the United States.
She was CNN’s South Asia Bureau Chief; worked for Time Magazine and leading Indian media. She is a speaker at global conferences organized by the UN, Governments, conglomerates, universities and think tanks on war, terrorism, media, politics, inequality, diversity, women, environment and democracy.
An instant bestseller, her first book “Island of Blood” released by Penguin sold out in six days, creating publishing history. She received many awards, including the coveted American George Polk Award for her coverage in CNN of Kabul’s takeover by the Taliban. She won the Chameli Devi Jain Award for her “sensitive portrayal of the human condition”. She is Contributing Editor for the "The Week" magazine, a Board Member of the Switzerland-based Women’s International Network as well as the Vienna-headquartered Women Without Borders.
Hassan Damluji is Founder and Executive Director of the think tank Global Nation. He advises many of the critical institutions for international cooperation, including philanthropies, UN institutions and governments. He is also an author, a Senior Fellow in International Relations at the London School of Economics, and a board member of multiple organziations including being Chair of the Iraq Fund for Higher Education, which oversees Baghdad Business School.
Hassan was a strategic architect of the WHO Pandemic Hub and has built global networks for genomic surveillance and AI-driven disease tracking, as well as a cross-UN response to the Secretary-General’s Call to Action on Extreme Heat. He has co-founded and sat on the board of major development initiatives including the $2bn Lives and Livelihoods Fund and the Global Institute for Disease Elimination.
He spent a decade at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, serving as Deputy Director for Global Policy and Advocacy. His book, The Responsible Globalist (Penguin Allen Lane), was described by Riz Ahmed as “visionary”, by Bill Gates as “a good read for people who care about solving global problems” and by Richard Curtis as "the book I would have written if I was smart enough".
Annika Silva-Leander is Head of Strategic Initiatives and UN Permanent Observer at International IDEA. In this role she represents International IDEA at the UN General Assembly as a leading voice and advocate on democracy. In her UN role, she leads International IDEA’s UN democracy advocacy and research, coordinates engagement with the UN system, produces policy analysis and data on the links between democracy, sustainable development, and the UN’s other pillars, and oversees the UN & Democracy Hub. She also leads the SDG 16 Data Initiative, a consortium of 18 non-governmental organizations that produce non-official data and annual reports that track progress on SDG 16. She also oversees the coordination of the Global Democracy Coalition, a coalition of 180+ democracy organizations and centers worldwide, whose Secretariat is hosted by International IDEA.
In her role as Head of North America (2021–2026), Annika established and led IDEA’s first Washington, DC office, alongside its New York UN office, and managed outreach and partnerships in the region, including engagement with U.S. and Canadian government stakeholders and collaboration with civil society, think tanks, and academic institutions. Between 2018 and 2021, Silva-Leander was the Head of the Democracy Assessment Unit in Stockholm, where she led International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy report, as lead author, editor and Programme head. She also oversaw the production of the annually updated Global State of Democracy Indices and the implementation of the Covid-19 Global Monitor on Democracy and Human Rights. From 2015 to 2018, she worked as the Senior Adviser to the Secretary-General of International IDEA.
Prior to joining International IDEA, Silva-Leander worked for 10 years as a Social Development Specialist at the World Bank, on civic engagement and poverty reduction in Asia, Latin America and Africa. During her nine years in Asia (Indonesia and Cambodia), she worked for the World Bank, UNICEF and UNDP. She started her career at the AVINA Foundation in Costa Rica, managing grants to civil society organizations in Latin America.
Annika Silva-Leander is a member of the Advisory Board for Georgetown University’s Department of Government MA Programs (American Government, Conflict Resolution, and Democracy & Governance).
She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science and is a Swedish-Chilean global citizen who grew up in France.