Liberia becomes eligible for UN Peacebuilding Fund

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared today that Liberia is eligible to receive assistance from the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, set up a year ago to help States emerging from conflict consolidate their gains and not slide back into war.

Mr. Ban also instructed the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) to start consultations with the Liberian Government and local civil society partners in the West African country to devise a priority plan, his spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters.

That plan is expected to list key activities to push forward the consolidation of peace in Liberia, which was torn apart by civil war for most of the period between 1989 and 2003.

Susanne Frueh of the UN Peacebuilding Support Office, which manages the Fund, said countries can become eligible in one of three ways: as a result of a declaration by the Secretary-General, by being under consideration by the Peacebuilding Commission, or to specific country projects through the Fund’s emergency mechanism.

The Fund is a multi-year standing trust fund that has an initial funding target of $250 million and so far has collected deposits worth almost $144 million from donor countries.

To date, it has approved grants of more than $46 million to 21 projects in Burundi and Sierra Leone, the first two countries under formal consideration by the related UN Peacebuilding Commission. It has also spent $700,000 in emergency funds to support dialogue between Côte d’Ivoire’s opposing political forces and $800,000 to back mediation efforts in the troubled Central African Republic (CAR).