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Ambassador Pekka Puustinen, Permanent Representative of Finland to OECD and UNESCO, signed a commitment to financially support the forthcoming evaluation of the , in a ceremony at UNESCO today.

“The grant goes a long way to helping make the evaluation possible,” said Frank La Rue, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information. “In turn, the evaluation will help us identify where to strengthen the media development work of the IPDC,” he added.

Finland’s contribution comes in addition to its annual generous donation to the IPDC special account, which helps to support grassroots media projects in developing countries. The IPDC was chaired by Finland’s Jyrki Pulkkinen from November 2012 to November 2014. 

The decision to evaluate the IPDC was agreed by the Council of the IPDC at its 30^th session in November 2016, updating the previous evaluation, which took place a decade earlier. 

The forthcoming exercise will also fulfill a recommendation by UNESCO’s external auditors, accepted by the Organization’s Executive Board. This is to assess the cost-benefit ratio of IPDC’s specific form of governance.

UNESCO’s Internal Oversight Services are managing the evaluation, and have . Once the evaluators have been selected, an inception report will be shared with all IPDC Council members.

The final evaluation report will be shared with both the Council and the Executive Board.