Johanna Westeson

Johanna Westeson is a Policy Fellow at SEI Headquarers – Rights and Equity, Resources, Rights and Development Division.

At SEI, she works primarily in the Agreement-making in the Sámi homeland project. The project, executed in close collaboration with Sámi reindeer herding communities, assesses to what extent agreements between herding communities and industries expected to drive green transition projects have the potential to safeguard indigenous rights and reindeer wellbeing.

Johanna has previously held positions as a Legal Advisor in, e.g., the human rights organizations Civil Rights Defenders and Amnesty International, working on minority rights, indigenous rights, climate justice and social/economic rights. At Amnesty International, she built the Sámi rights program of the Swedish branch of the organization, and she has a broad network of human rights and legal experts and scholars in and outside of Sápmi. She has domestic and international experience of human rights litigation, advocacy and research. Johanna has worked internationally with the Center for Reproductive Rights and Sida and has been a human rights consultant with the WHO.

In 2024, she published her first book, a historical and personal narrative of the Swedish colonial history and present in Sápmi. The book, “Min kärlek till detta folk”, takes as its point of departure the work of her grandfather, a priest, who served the state in Sápmi at a critical time of Sweden’s colonial expansion, the early 1900s.

Johanna holds an LL.M. from Uppsala University, Sweden, and an LL.M. from Columbia University, New York, where she focused on international human rights and feminist legal theory.