Mona Juul
Mona Juul (born 1959 in Steinkjer) is an official in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former politician for the Labour Party.
She hailed from Sparbu, and was educated in political science. Along with her husband Terje Rød-Larsen she played a key role in the Oslo Accords. The secret negotiations led to the peace agreement signing on September 13, 1993 in Washington D.C., between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Juul and the rest of the Oslo team of facilitators focused on the conflict between Israel and the PLO, knowing that a peace agreement would have to be created by the adversaries themselves and that a group acting as mediator would be vital in making appropriate arrangements for negotiations.
During the first cabinet Stoltenberg, from 2000 to 2001, Juul was appointed State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2001 to 2004 she served as the Norwegian ambassador to Israel. Since 2005 she serves as deputy director and ambassador in the Norwegian delegation to the United Nations in New York City. On September 1, 2014 she succeeded Kim Traavik as Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Podcasts:
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by Maya Angelou
Pledge Youth Poem
by: Maya AngelouA Pledge to Rescue Our Youth
Maya Angelou
© 2006
Young women, young men of color, we add our voices to the voices of your ancestors who speak to you over ancient seas and across impossible mountain tops.
Come up from the gloom of national neglect, you have already been paid for.
Come out of the shadow of irrational prejudice, you owe
no racial debt to history.
The blood of our bodies and the prayers of our souls have bought you a future
free from shame and bright beyond the telling of it.
We pledge ourselves and our resources to seek for you clean and well-furnished schools, safe and non-threatening streets, employment which makes use of your talents, but does not degrade your dignity.
You are the best we have.
You are all we have.
You are what we have become.