Foreign Ministry's press releases

Thomas Greminger, Secretary General of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has appointed Ambassador Tuula Yrjölä from Finland as Director of the OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre (CPC) and Deputy Secretary General, starting from the beginning of 2020. The position is an important post at the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna.

Finland will allocate EUR 8 million from development cooperation funds to the work of the United Nations Children's Fund in Nepal. The funding of UNICEF's country programme will improve the quality of teaching for the next three years, as well as the water and sanitation services of communities and schools.

Finland will allocate EUR 3 million through the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF to supporting the most vulnerable children’s access to education in Syria.

Finland will contribute EUR 68.4 million to the replenishment of the African Development Fund (AfDF), which is the concessional window of the African Development Bank Group. Finland is also preparing a loan of EUR 80 million for the AfDF. The AfDF supports the continent's poorest countries.

According to a new UN assessment, 168 million people in 53 countries are currently in need of emergency relief. The guidelines for persons with disabilities in humanitarian crises, supported by Finland, have recently been adopted at both EU and UN levels.

At the end of the Conference on Business and Human Rights, held by Finland in Brussels on 2 December, Minister of Labour Timo Harakka and State Secretary Johanna Sumuvuori published an Agenda for Action for the EU.

A bug bounty project provides opportunities for information security researchers and hackers to examine, within a set of defined boundaries, the information security of selected services on the Internet. The protective measures of the targeted systems will not be opened for the duration of the project. 

Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari will visit Washington, the Unites States on 3 to 4 December. During his visit, he will meet United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and other representatives of the administration. He will also visit the US Congress.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs will organise a conference to advance EU-level discussions on how businesses can better take human rights into account in their own activities, in the activities of their partners and in their supply chains. Minister of Employment Timo Harakka will open and close the conference.

On 2 December, Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto will visit The Hague, where he will meet Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands Stef Blok and representatives of international organisations based in The Hague.