Marjatta Rasi invited as adviser to UN Peacebuilding Fund

Press release 40/2007
12 March 2007

Marjatta Rasi, Under-Secretary of State for Development Policy at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, has been invited as member of the advisory group for the UN Peacebuilding Fund. The role of the independent advisory group of eminent peacebuilders is to provide oversight on the operation and financing reports of the fund.

The advisory group will convene twice a year, and its members are appointed for a term of two years.

The Peacebuilding Fund supports the activities of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, established in 2005. The Peacebuilding Fund is not a long-term support fund. Instead, it guides allocation of funds, for instance, for projects requiring rapid intervention in target countries. At the moment, the target countries include Sierra Leone and Burundi. Even though the fund acts in close cooperation with the Peacebuilding Commission, technically speaking, it is a separate initiative.

In 2006, Finland supported the activities of the UN Peacebuilding Fund by 1.6 million euros.

Additional information: Counsellor Anne Meskanen, Unit for General Global Affairs, tel. +358 (0)9 1605 5593