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.
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.
KIOS supports human rights projects of civil society organisations.
Typical projects funded by KIOS include:
- Human rights campaigning, lobbying and advocacy
- Human rights monitoring and documentation
- Human rights awareness raising and education
- Providing legal aid
- Capacity building
KIOS aims at supporting projects that especially deal with the rights of the most vulnerable groups, such as women, children, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities, human rights defenders and people living in extreme poverty.
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