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Gender equality award to Head of Norwegian Border Guard

Lieutenant Colonel Jørn Erik Berntsen (right) is awarded the Norwegian Armed Forces’ gender equality award. Here together wit

Head of the Norwegian Border Guard Lieutenant Colonel Jørn Erik Berntsen is awarded the Norwegian Armed Forces’ gender equality award.

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Berntsen, who was proposed as nominee to the award by workers at the border guard’s main camp Sør-Varanger Garrison (GSV), was given the award for always focusing on gender equality and the personnel’s welfare. He has integrated girls and boys in the same squads; they live in the same barrack rooms and accomplish the unit’s tasks together, GSV’s Facebook page reads.

The gender equality award is given out once a year during the Norwegian Armed Forces’ Women’s Conference.

In an interview with Forsvarets Forum earlier this year Berntsen said that there is a clear need for women in the Armed Forces: - We need diversity and more impulses to be able to execute our missions better.

- From my service in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Norway I have experienced that units with personnel of both sexes are those that perform best, he added.

Some 40-50 of the 600 soldiers and officers at GSV are women. The total share of female soldiers and officers in the Norwegian Forces is 8.5 percent.