Press releases of Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick visits Finland on 19–20 October 2020.

The EU Foreign Affairs Council will convene on Monday 12 October in Luxembourg. The main items of discussion on the agenda will be Russia, the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue, Latin America and the Caribbean. Over a working lunch, ministers will have a discussion on how the EU and its Member States could jointly intensify their support for the rules-based international system (RBIS).

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs organised a crowdsourced information security testing for its public online services between December 2019 and May 2020. With the bug bounty program, organisations can invite information security researchers and hackers to examine, within a set of defined boundaries, the information security of selected services on the Internet. The information protection of the targeted systems were not opened for the project.

The Development Policy Committee calls for a faster preparation of the corporate social responsibility legislation, which would obligate Finnish companies to exercise due diligence also outside Finland and help to reduce harmful environmental and human rights impacts.

KABUL, 6 October 2020 – Afghanistan and international partners in Kabul today officially launched preparations for the 2020 Afghanistan Conference, scheduled to take place 23-24 November at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and be co-hosted by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA), Finland and the United Nations.

The meeting of the EU development ministers on 29 September will be held as a video conference. Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari will represent Finland at the meeting.

Finland will participate in the EU Integrated Resolve (EU IR 20) Exercise, which will be held between 21 September and 4 December 2020.

The EU Foreign Affairs Council will meet in Brussels on Monday 21 September. Finland’s representative at the meeting will be Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto. The main topics on the agenda will be Belarus, the relationship between the EU and the African Union, and Libya.

The European Court of Human Rights issued a judgement concerning Finland on 17 September 2020, finding a violation of Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari will visit Berlin on 20-22 September 2020.

On 17 September 2020, 17 participating States of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) decided to commission a report on serious human rights violations related to the presidential election in Belarus. Finland is one of the countries that took part in the decision.

The budget proposal focuses on improvements to the ability of Finland’s missions abroad to operate effec-tively; participation in international crisis management, conflict prevention and mediation; measures to en-sure an appropriate level of development finance; and post-crisis measures following the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic and post-crisis management greatly highlight the need for international cooperation. Post-pandemic recovery funding, such as the EU’s recovery package, will also bring new opportunities for commercial and economic cooperation.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most events of the high-level week and the 75th anniversary session of the United Nations General Assembly will be held virtually this year. President of the Republic Sauli Niinistö, Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto and Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari will speak at the 75th UN General Assembly

On 17 September 2020, Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto will attend a meeting of the Nordic Foreign Ministers via video conference.

The 2020 Afghanistan Conference scheduled for 23-24 November 2020 in Geneva is a milestone event in Afghanistan’s journey to peace, prosperity and self-reliance.

Minister for Nordic Cooperation Thomas Blomqvist will attend a meeting of Ministers for Nordic Cooperation on Thursday 10 September 2020. Due to the COVID-19 situation, the meeting will be held as a video conference.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto will attend a meeting of Nordic and Baltic Foreign Ministers, to be held in the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) cooperation format in Tallinn on 8–9 September 2020.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs will hold an online consultation on the preparation of the Government new Human Rights Report on Thursday 10 September at 10.00–12.30. This online consultation will discuss matters raised on the draft document during the consultation process.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto will visit Vilnius on 29 August and Tallinn on 30 August.

On 27 and 28 August, EU foreign affairs ministers will hold an informal meeting (Gymnich), hosted by the German Presidency of the Council of the EU. Foreign ministers will discuss the EU-Russia relations, Turkey, and the situation in Belarus. They will also have a discussion on the geopolitical impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the EU's strategic response to them.