Participation: Finland emphasizes the importance of partnerships and cooperation between governments, international organizations, civil society and other actors in advancing the Women, Peace and Security agenda. As part of its efforts to promote the WPS agenda at the international level and in bilateral relations, Finland has supported countries in preparing and implementing their National Action Plans. As part of this support, Finland commits to undertaking a study to identify challenges and obstacles towomen’s meaningful participation in peace processes with the aim to strengthen the link between practical work in the field and research-basedconflict analysis on women’s participation.
Identifying challenges and obstacles to women’s meaningful participation in peace processes is ongoing and is taking place in different conflict countries and supported by different responsible actors implementing Finland’s NAP, such CMI, FELM andFinnChurchaid. Results are disseminated in local and global fora. Compiling best practices and analyzing results in different contexts is underway.
Finland is implementing its third NAP.
We have been emphasizing the importance of partnerships, with governments and civil society in international and bilateral efforts to support countries in preparing and implementing NAPs.
Study commitment: This compilation of best practices is currently underway (so no major updates here as yet).
Sexual violence in conflict: Finland together with Norway commit to deploying a police team to UNMISS with the aim strengthening capacity of local police in prevention, response, prosecution of conflict-related sexual violence.
The UNMISS SPT SGBV team is deployed in Sudan.
Financial commitments: Pledges to financially contribute EUR 3.9 million toUN Women’s Regional Women, Peace and Security Project phase two (2019- 2021) in the MENA region.
The project is ongoing with planned financial support from Finland.
Finland will continue to finance OSCE to support the implementation of WPS agenda in the OSCE region, with EUR 50,000 Euros during 2019-20, building on the work done between 2016 and 2017.
Finland has allocated financial support of 50,000 EUR to “OSCE Support to Women, Peace and Security Agenda” Project in 2019. In addition, Finland has allocated 63,000 EUR for the Project “Sustaining the OSCE Mediation Support Capacity” in 2020.
Finland supports efforts to fight impunity for the most serious international crimes, especially SGBV. As a result, Finland has been supporting the ICC Trust Fund for Victims and participates in the interventions financed by the fund. Finland is financially supporting through multi-year funding, targeting support to SGBV victims in Sub-Saharan Africa (2017-2021) with EUR 800,000 (EUR 200,000 annually).
Finland’s financial support has been allocated as pledged.
Finland pledges to support the implementation of the Arms Trade Treaty by supporting UNSCAR with a special focus on women, including young women, with a total funding of EUR 1 million.
Finland’s financial support has been allocated as pledged.
Mediation: Together with Norway, Finland supports annual Gender and Inclusive Mediation seminars that are implemented in partnership with Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), the United Nations Department of Political Affairs and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). CMI is a significant partner for Finland in WPS.
The latest seminar took place in Helsinki in November 2019. Next seminar is planned for 2020.