Elisabeth Rasmusson became the World Food Programme’s Assistant Executive Director for the Partnership, Governance and Advocacy Department in April 2013. In this role, Ms Rasmusson oversees the organization’s partnership activities with governments, NGOs, the Rome-based UN agencies and the private sector, as well as our offices in Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dubai, London, Madrid, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington.

Before joining WFP, Ms. Rasmusson was Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Norway’s largest humanitarian NGO, with 3,000 staff who protect and assist displaced people in some of the world’s most challenging conflicts. She was responsible for the organisation’s activities in more than 20 countries. Ms. Rasmusson, who has worked in the humanitarian sector for more than 20 years, was awarded the prestigious French Legion of Honour (l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur) in 2011 for her tireless efforts to promote the rights of refugees and internally displaced persons and her dedicated work for the Norwegian Refugee Council.”

Her wide-ranging career in humanitarian affairs features assignments as the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Uganda and as senior advisor to the UN deputy emergency coordinator, where she contributed to a better understanding of the functions of humanitarian and resident coordinators. She has also served as a field coordinator for the UN in Angola; cooperation coordinator for ICRC in Colombia; and deputy head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. She served as NRC’s interim country director in Georgia and then resident representative in Geneva, where she established the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, the leading international body monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide. In Geneva, she helped develop and implement the IASC Humanitarian Reform.

Ms. Rasmusson is qualified as a Resident Coordinator/Humanitarian Coordinator (HC) and is a member of the HC pool. She has served in the advisory group of the Central Emergency Response Fund and on DFID's Humanitarian Emergency Response Review Senior Advisory Board. Ms. Rasmusson has a degree in political science, public international law and social anthropology from the University of Oslo. She is a national of Norway. She is married to Gerard Stoudmann from Switzerland.

[September 2016]

Source: World Food Programme