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Friday, September 07, 2007

Finnish official named to head advisory group for UN Peacebuilding Fund

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has designated Finland’s Marjatta Rasi to  serve as the first chair of the advisory group to the United Nations fund set up to help meet the immediate needs of countries emerging from conflict.

The Peacebuilding Fund, launched last year, is a multi-year standing trust fund that has an initial funding target of $250 million and so far has collected deposits worth $143.8 million from donor countries.

It has approved grants of more than $46 million to 19 projects in Burundi and Sierra Leone, the two countries currently under consideration by the Peacebuilding Commission, and also $700,000 in emergency funding to support dialogue between opposing forces in divided Côte d’Ivoire.

Ms. Rasi – currently Under-Secretary of State for Development in Finland – and the other nine members of the Peacebuilding Fund’s Advisory Group are tasked with providing advice and oversight of the Fund’s performance and management and the speed and appropriateness of its resource allocations. The members are independent and appointed for two-year periods.

The other members are: Paulo Roberto Campos Tarrisse da Fontoura (Brazil), Wu Gang (China), Nataša Mikuš (Croatia), Mounir Zahran (Egypt), Yukio Takasu (Japan), Vidar Helgesen (Norway), Joseph Mutuboba (Rwanda), Dan Smith (the United Kingdom) and Carlos Pascual (the United States).

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