The Finnish NGO Foundation for Human Rights KIOS

http://www.kios.fi/


The Finnish NGO Foundation for Human Rights KIOS

The Finnish NGO Foundation for Human Rights KIOS is a consortium of eleven Finnish organisations working for human rights and development issues. KIOS was founded in 1998 to fund projects promoting human rights and development of democracy. KIOS is an independent, non-political, non-religious and non-governmental foundation.

Founding organisations are Amnesty International Finnish Section, Committee of 100 in Finland, Finn Church Aid, Finnish Disabled People’s International Development Association (FIDIDA), Finnish League for Human Rights, Finnish Peace Committee, Finnish Refugee Council, UN Association of Finland, Service Centre for Development Cooperation (KEPA), Finnish National Committee for UNICEF and The National Committee for UN Women in Finland.

KIOS promotes the realisation of human rights in developing countries as they are defined in the human rights treaties and instruments of the United Nations and the Council of Europe and in other correspondent regional human rights instruments. To advance this mission KIOS funds human rights projects of developing countries and is thus a direct channel of support to projects that promote the realisation of human rights of the developing countries and human rights knowledge of civil society actors. The mission of KIOS is to channel development cooperation funds of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland effectively and with good quality to human rights projects of the developing countries.

The founder organisations are represented in the KIOS Executive Board, which is the supreme organ of KIOS. Executive Board formulates the strategy of the organisation, guides the staff in its work and makes all the final funding decisions. KIOS has a staff of five and an annual budget of approximately 1,5 million euro. KIOS receives financial support for its activities from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. The KIOS office is located in Helsinki, where we share office premises with Abilis, FIDIDA and Siemenpuu.