Two SL projects win UN funds to promote peace-building

Two Sri Lankan projects made with the intention to increase gender-responsive and youth-inclusive peace-building, had won UN funds worth $ 2,454,148 on Thursday, the UN Peace-building Fund said.

Accordingly, $ 2,000,000 was released by the UN Peace building Fund’s (PBF) Gender and Youth Promotion Initiative (GYPI) to the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to implement the project title “EMPOWER: Building peace through the economic empowerment of women in Northern Sri Lanka.”

The second project which received funds was proposed by the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka and was titled “Empowering and mentoring youth volunteers to engage with transitional justice to promote reconciliation.” The project received $ 454,148.48.

The UN Peace building Fund’s (PBF) Gender and Youth Promotion Initiative (GYPI) 2017 has allocated a total of $27.5 million for 17 projects in 13 countries.

Of this, $16 million is going to gender projects and $11 million to youth projects.

In a statement, the Fund said the GYPI is the Fund’s special call for proposals aimed at increasing gender-responsive and youth-inclusive peace-building within the Peace-building fund’s portfolio and contributing to the strengthening of these often under-recognized areas of peace building.