As a country that relies on international trade and co-operation, Finland has long championed multilateralism and an effective multilateral system. In doing so, it has successfully built a reputation as a reliable multilateral partner, which enables it to shape decision making on issues it deems important, despite a relatively small voice.
An effective multilateral partner: Finland’s approach to multilateral influencing
Abstract
As a country that relies on international trade and co-operation, Finland has long championed multilateralism and effective multilateral institutions. Building a reputation as an approachable and trusted multilateral partner has enabled Finland to effectively influence in line with its priorities and objectives despite its relatively small multilateral budget and shareholding.
A “globally influential Finland” was an explicit objective in the 2019-2023 Government Programme and was also highlighted in the 2021 Report on Development Policy Across Parliamentary Terms. This helped bring strategic reflection and intent to Finland’s approach to its multilateral partnerships. Key elements of this approach have included:
Strong support for core funding. Across its multilateral funding, Finland has consistently provided a high share of core funding.
Long-term and consistent engagement on priorities through several channels. Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) has used a series of “campaigns” to work consistently over extended periods of time to elevate key issues, often in coalition with like-minded countries. These have involved high-level advocacy, among them the “HeforShe” and “I Belong” campaigns, to complement engagement at a more technical level and in multilateral organisations’ boards.
Results-oriented steering of multilateral influencing. Finland commissions strategic evaluations of its policy influencing and uses annual influencing results reports to enhance learning, share good practice within the MFA and inform future approaches.
Advocacy documents to ensure coherent messaging. Since 2017, the MFA has refined the multilateral influencing plans that guide staff in their engagement with multilateral organisations, updating them several times based on results and learning.
Experienced and skilful staff within the MFA. The internationally recognisable expertise of Finland’s diplomats and experts has enabled Finland to build credibility among international actors on priority issues. An independent strategic evaluation in 2020 also identified as good practice the MFA’s recognition that effective engagement and influence require “a deep understanding of the Multilateral, its operations, and the global context it operates in”.
Strategic use of staff placements. The MFA has co-ordinated the recruitment of Finnish nationals to multilateral organisations through direct secondments, Junior Professional Officers, United Nations (UN) Volunteers and the SARC programme, supported by an Ambassador for International Recruitments in the MFA’s Political Department. Staff placements are official development assistance (ODA) eligible and considered to be part of Finland’s development policy and co-operation.
Finland has built a reputation as a supporter of multilateral effectiveness through its core funding, allowing it to influence from within. For example, being one of UN Women’s largest core donors brings credibility to its influencing efforts. With its reputation Finland is able to complement this with softly earmarked funding to spearhead specific themes. It backs this up with the strategic deployment of visible, high-level advocacy, for instance for the greater inclusion of persons with disabilities.
Influencing reports have supported organisational learning. Influencing synthesis reports systematically summarise and analyse tacit knowledge, experience, reported results and issues with multilateral influencing. A result of such learning is that the MFA has focused on fewer influencing goals and streamlined organisation specific plans.
Its multilateral influencing, enabled by co-ordination between different MFA departments, has driven more effective approaches for gender equality. Finland played a central role in drafting the Committee on World Food Security’s first-ever Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girl’s Empowerment in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition and pushing the lengthy and challenging negotiations towards unanimous approval in 2023. It was also instrumental in ensuring that the World Bank’s 2024-30 gender strategy is ambitious and in line with a human rights-based approach. A 2020 independent strategic evaluation further credited Finland’s multilateral influencing activities with strengthening UN Women’s monitoring and evaluation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, including having all evaluations systematically include a gender perspective and human rights, and cited the global-level results of Finland’s influence on the UN reform process and its support for integrating the rights of persons with disabilities into humanitarian assistance principles.
Regular reflection is necessary to identify long-term influencing opportunities and focused priorities. The independent 2020 strategic evaluation highlighted the value of a regular pragmatic assessment of multilateral partners and using this to prioritise strategic, long-term opportunities for multilateral engagement. Between 2014 and 2017, MFA influencing plans were found to have limited impact in practice due to ineffective target setting and results reporting. The updated 2020 plans were improved through more focused thematic objectives and targets, more relevant corporate performance tracking, and flexibility in reporting as well as a publicly available summary.
Country-level knowledge is a key asset for corporate-level influencing. According to the independent 2020 strategic evaluation, the information collected by Finnish embassies at the partner country level usefully supported and informed corporate-level influencing by the MFA. Effective information exchange and communication across MFA headquarters and Finland’s embassies and permanent delegations is critical.
The capacity and expertise of staff are the MFA’s most important asset. Evaluations have found that the MFA employs qualified and effective “influencers”, who are its most important asset for influencing. MFA recruitment criteria and an overall high level of MFA staff motivation have been key factors in this. In a context of stretched embassy staff resources and frequent staff rotations in headquarters, however, influencing and partnership activities may quickly be seen as extracurricular. Institutionalised monitoring and learning systems can help mitigate the challenges of staff turnover and avoid missed opportunities.
Informal interactions and personal relationships play a key role. Staff of Finland’s permanent mission in New York estimated that 80% of their influencing work in relation to the UN was carried out through a range of informal channels. As noted in an independent 2022 evaluation, flexibility and a soft, constructive and inclusive approach to meetings and negotiations, among other factors, were key to Finland’s successful 2019 European Council Presidency.
Financial resources for multilateral funding must match ambition. It was noted in both the 2020 strategic evaluation of Finland’s influencing activities, interviews that the significant 2015-16 ODA budget cuts affected Finland’s access to multilateral organisations, led to lost influencing opportunities, and put a strain on Finland’s reputation and standing with its multilateral partners.
Balancing the promotion of Finnish staff recruitment with multilateral effectiveness is important for partnerships. Finland’s greater efforts to encourage recruitment of Finnish nationals in recent years are seen by some multilateral partners as verging on conditionality and may put pressure on partnerships.
Particip GmbH and NIRAS Finland Oy (2020), Evaluation: Finnish Development Policy Influencing Activities in Multilateral Organisations, Volume 1, Main Report, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Helsinki, https://um.fi/documents/384998/0/Vol1+_MainReport_Evaluation+of+Finnish+Development+Policy+Influencing+Activities+in+Multilateral+Organisations+%281%29.pdf/2666cd6a-0bb2-1c76-0659-db1ac6fa30bf?t=1591860985653.
Particip GmbH and NIRAS Finland Oy (2022), Evaluation of the Finnish Development Policy Influencing in the European Union: Volume 1, Main Report, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Helsinki, https://um.fi/documents/384998/0/Evaluation_Development_Policy_Influencing_in_EU_Vol_1+%282%29.pdf/c1f3acb7-4f41-92d1-c8c9-5249b3a9306a?t=1666668788984.
OECD (2024), OECD Development Co-operation Peer Reviews: Finland 2024, OECD Development Co-operation Peer Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, (forthcoming).
OECD (2021), “Partnering with the multilateral system”, Fundamentals, Development Co-operation TIPs – Tools, Insights, Practices, https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/development-co-operation-tips-tools-insights-practices_be69e0cf-en/partnering-with-the-multilateral-system_ebed4316-en.html.
OECD (2022), Multilateral Development Finance 2022, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9fea4cf2-en.
To learn more about Finland’s development co-operation see:
OECD (2023), "Finland", in Development Co-operation Profiles, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/dbcd0a36-en (accessed 16 July 2024).
See more In Practice examples from Finland here: www.oecd.org/development-cooperation-learning?tag-key+partner=finland#search.
