Welcome to the renewed website of the delegation!

Ambassador Pertti Majanen The Permanent Delegation of Finland in Paris welcomes you to its renewed website. The Permanent Delegation represents Finland in OECD and UNESCO and serves the Finnish decision makers, the public sector and the Finnish society as a whole in the fields of competence of these two international organisations. Communication including this website is an essential part of our service.

UNESCO and OECD are very different kinds of organisations. The former is a UN organisation with universal membership and global responsibilities. The latter is an organisation of 30 industrialized countries, which serves the economic and social development of its members through research, analyses and policy advice. However, more than ever these two organisations are united today in the common promotion of global peace and security and in order to govern globalisation for the common and equal benefit of all nations.

The UNESCO Convention confirms peace and security as one of UNESCO's main objectives. This objective is to be revisited in the connection of the preparation of UNESCO's Medium-Term Strategy for 2008-2013. In the fields of education, culture and communication the organisation has ample possibilities to strengthen and concretize its preventive role e.g. in removing cultural and religious prejudices and misunderstandings.

The sectoral coverage of the OECD is very wide - in fact within its members' public sector it deals with everything but defence. In all sectors OECD strongly contributes towards building up global rules of the game, which are necessary for global governance and contibute towards smooth and non-conflictual function of the international system. With the ongoing enlargement andn enhanced engagement process the OECD is seeking to increase its global relevance. The new Secretary-General, Mr. Angel Gurría strongly emphasizes the role of the OECD in governing globalisation. As also underlined by Finland new horizontal and inter-sectoral approaches are sorely needed in order to tackle global problems that today exceed both sectoral and national frontiers.

Ambassador Pertti Majanen