Sharma and David C. Atteberry, Mission Director, USAID, also signed a Joint Financing Agreement (JFA) to this effect.According to the Ministry, with this partnership, the number of donors supporting the NPTF has reached eight. [break]
The other partners who have been contributing to the NPTF so far are Denmark, European Union, Finland, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
USAID will support the peace process as a contributor to the Fund and as a participant in the Technical Cooperation pool for Capacity Development (TC Pool).
The government of U.S. will provide 500,000 US dollars to the NPTF to support the conflict affected communities, transitional justice, public infrastructure reconstruction and other peace commitments.
As part of the TC Pool, USAID will also appoint gender equality and social inclusion advisors.
The advisors will serve to strengthen the on-going work within the Ministry´s and Peace Fund Secretariat´s Gender Units and address gender and inclusion within NPTF´s programme.
A total of 550,000 US dollars will be received for the mechanism on TC Pool and 1.5 million US dollars for NPTF from USAID as per its initial commitment.
On the occasion, Secretary Sharma thanked the U.S. government for providing support to the NPTF and TC Pool.
Sharma said the support will be utilized in a transparent and capable manner. He also thanked all other donor partners for supporting Nepal´s peace process by funding through NPTF-a unique post-conflict resource mobilization tool led by the Government of Nepal.
Similarly, U.S. Ambassador Bodde expressed the commitment of U.S. government to furthering the peace process to benefit Nepal´s people and their human rights for inclusion, justice and peace.
Bodde also thanked for valiant efforts of the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction and the Peace Fund Secretariat to shepherd the commitment of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA)-2006 through the Fund´s programming.
Nepal is the first and only country to lead a joint donor-host government trust fund.Since its inception in 2007, the NPTF funds government institutions to implement peace initiatives included in the CPA such as support to conflict-affected persons, elections, cantonment management and infrastructure reconstruction.
To date, NPTF has financed a total of 53 projects, of these, 24 projects have been completed and 29 are ongoing. A total of Rs. 13.868 billion is approved for the projects.
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