National Defence Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2018

[Richard Martel, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, CPC]

Hello.

My question is going to be in French.

It is for you, Ms. Woroniuk.

Do you think the United Nations is doing enough to ensure progress in Mali? Should Canada be doing more?

[Beth Woroniuk]

Thank you for the question.

I am not an expert on the Mali mission. However, on supporting women in peacekeeping, I will comment generally that we know there is more work to be done. There is more that the UN could and should be doing. It's important that we have initiatives like the Elsie initiative, and that we have strong Canadian statements across the board on supporting women in peacekeeping. It's also important, as my colleague mentioned, to look for ways to engage local populations, and women's organizations in particular .

[Richard Martel]

So you think that Canada is doing enough.

Do you think that the UN is doing enough? I'm sorry, I didn't really understand your answer. I asked you whether the United Nations and Canada could do more when it comes to women.

[Beth Woroniuk]

As I mentioned, I'm not an expert on the specifics of the Mali situation, but we have heard consistently that the UN could do more across the board. There have been concerns raised that as budgets for peace support operations are decreased, one of the first places where there are cuts is gender advisers. There is a real concern that these issues are seen as less than core or less than important. When money is in short supply, some of the work on relating to local populations and some of the training on gender equality issues are the things that the missions cut.

Yes, there is more that the United Nations could be doing across the board to live up to its commitments on women in peace support operations.

[Richard Martel]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Bezan, go ahead.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have about four minutes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Jones, you're talking about the three options Canada has as part of the modern-day counterterrorism operations that need to occur. You mentioned NATO and the coalition of the willing, as we're doing in Iraq and Syria right now. You also talked about hardening UN peacekeeping.

We have heard from other witnesses here that we need to do more under chapter VII. Is that where you would see that hardening of UN peacekeeping? It would be more counterterrorism operations, more military assets in the field to bring about the change toward a peaceful resolution in those terrorist regions that are afflicted with the counter-insurgency we're seeing.

[Bruce Jones]

I think the way things are arranged in Mali is fairly sophisticated, with the French providing essentially the higher and direct CT operations, and the UN having a wider role. Even then, even in that context, the UN has to have the kinds of troop contributors that are capable of responding to and confronting attacks from AQIM and others.

Almost all operations since the mid-nineties have operated under chapter VII. That's a standard at this stage. The issue is, what's the character and the quality of the troop contributors? If you have an operation that has the option of responding under chapter VII but has low-capability troop contributors, you will end up with a real challenge between the purpose of why it's there and the authority it has, on the one hand, and its actual capabilities on the other.

Mali, Lebanon, Congo, the three places I mentioned, are where you've seen troop contributors come in that have a stronger capability and a willingness to be on the tougher edge of the peacekeeping spectrum. That has allowed the UN to implement its mandates in a more effective way in those contexts.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

With respect to supporting peace operations, you said, “Unfortunately, the UN's rules still mean that decisions made in the Department of Field Support are subject to the arcane and cumbersome tools of the Department of Management, which oversees headquarters operations. This dual key system introduces major inefficiencies and unnecessary redundancy.”

Perhaps you could talk about whether the UN has moved any closer to making sure that the peace operations—or peacemaking or peacekeeping, whatever you want to call it, the day-to-day operations, the management decisions—have gotten more modernized.

[Bruce Jones]

Yes, it's making progress. Nobody would accuse the UN of being an efficient institution. That is not the standard. It's still a highly inefficient institution.

Progress has been made under the last Secretary-General on improving the management practices for peacekeeping. The Department of Field Support has greater autonomy than it did before, and that has allowed some of the practices that are necessary for sophisticated field operations to be less impeded by the kinds of bureaucratic strictures of the Department of Management. It's a work in progress, though.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have about a minute.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You wrote just last month, “Various multinational task forces have deployed directly to areas affected by the twin ills of civil war and transnational terrorism.” You went on to say, regarding Mali, “In a fragile neighborhood with a history of poor governance and limited resources, this joint force targets cross-border operations of criminal networks and terrorist groups to deter violence, radicalization, and corruption.”

Is it a fair assessment to say that there isn't peace to keep there, that when you look at the G5 Sahel, supported by the French and the UN Alliance, we need to be fighting terrorism and quit talking about peacekeeping when things are just in so much disarray?

[Bruce Jones]

Peacekeeping has been in evolution for a long time. It's very rare in the contemporary period to deploy into a context where there's a perfect peace and all you're doing is implementing agreements. In almost all contexts, you have subgroups, partial groups or splinter groups that are attacking the peace or trying to undermine it. In what I described as the reform period, post-mid-nineties, peacekeepers had to be vigilant and fight back, push back against spoilers and others trying to undermine the peace. There is no such thing as a perfect static peace that you're just implementing.

Mali is farther out on that spectrum. You have actors who want to implement the peace, actors who are trying to negotiate that, and then others, like AQIM, who have no interest in the peace.

You have to be able to operate in those two realities simultaneously. On the one hand, there are groups you can work with to move forward on a political process while maintaining the threat of being able to deter spoilers, but, simultaneously, you have to be fighting back against AQIM and some other groups. These two realities are central to everything that happens in civil war management. Very rarely do we see perfect peace in which you're simply implementing the agreements of that peace.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Garrison, go ahead.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to start with a couple of quick questions for Dr. Jones, just to follow up.

You talked about the three options for Canadian participation in peacekeeping. When you did that, you didn't say very much about the post-peacekeeping situation that arises. Would you say that all three of those options have equal opportunities or equal benefits when it comes to what happens after achieving some kind of peace settlement?

[Bruce Jones]

No. I actually think one of the real strengths of the UN is the multi-dimensionality of its operations, which blend more smoothly into the post-conflict phase. NATO proved particularly bad at this, despite repeated efforts to get it to adopt a more multi-dimensional approach. Afghanistan is just not in the DNA of that institution. It's not how its headquarters are set up. Coalitions of the willing are experimenting with this. The Global Coalition against Daesh has done some things in this space that are creative, but it's a very incipient phase. The UN has a lot of experience with the transition from the more intensive peacekeeping phase to the post-conflict phase, recognizing that those are blurry distinctions for the reason I described. I actually think that's a substantial strength of the UN.

There are still weaknesses in the UN in terms of how it organizes its development assistance and its relationship with the World Bank. That's all work in progress as well. But the UN is starting from a better starting point on that than are the coalitions of the willing or NATO.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Would you say that the UN has a similar advantage when it comes to keeping a focus on the peace process during the conflict?

[Bruce Jones]

Yes. This is, I think, the most important dimension of what the UN learned in the phase from the mid-nineties onward—that your North Star is always the peace process. You're deploying force; you're deploying economic assets; you're engaging your men for operations, etc., but you're always trying to advance the peace process. You saw the report of the 2016 UN panel of experts that talked about the primacy of politics, and that's what they were referring to. You always want to have the peace process, with all the constraints and limits that it has, as the North Star of how you're organizing your assets.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

I want to turn to our other two witnesses. Thank you for being here today.

In your presentations, both of you made reference to things we need to do to make sure that women who are deployed are more successful. Maybe we'll start with Ms. Woroniuk. You could tell us if you have specific recommendations about what those things are.

[Beth Woroniuk]

First, I think it's important that the only dangers women encounter be the ones they signed up for. From talking to women deploying to peace operations, I think they are quite willing to take on the risks of all peacekeepers, but they should be kept safe in barracks and not have threats from other peacekeepers or be victims of blue-on-blue violence. We have to deal with that.

The second one is that we have to ensure that training is adequate and applied across the board, and that women receive the same kind of training opportunities as men. We also have to ensure that facilities and gear respond to the needs of both women and men. Just as a small example, we still hear stories of women using rucksacks that aren't made for women's bodies. We have to look at procurement and equipment.

We also have to make sure that women have the same opportunities. There are many stories from peace operations of women being relegated to administrative tasks. In many cases, this is not what they signed up to do. Women should have access to the same level of challenges and opportunities as men.

There are others, but I'll leave some time for my colleague to respond.

[Kathryn White]

Thank you.

I'm going to raise this bar a bit more and say that this is also about women in leadership positions. When we talk about developing new legal frameworks and about sclerotic processes and so on, this means that women need to be engaged, period. We know that successful, prosperous societies benefit. We know that peacekeeping does, as well.

I would also like to bring forward the issue of CT and gender. Women are actors and agents, including on issues like terrorism. I caution the committee against somehow talking about simply elevating women and providing them this specific opportunity. This is across the board. As I said earlier, it's the whole command of the military, right through to the fact that we're looking at civil military affairs as GE 9. This is an important issue that should not be ancillary, in my opinion.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

You anticipated my next question. How do we ensure that we get more women into those leadership roles, and how do we ensure that the men in leadership roles get additional training when we have women in peace and security?

I'll start with either one of you.