Evidence of meeting #110 for National Defence in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was peacekeeping.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Adam Day  Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University
Richard Gowan  Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University
Ameerah Haq  Former Under-Secretary-General, Department of Field Support, United Nations, As an Individual
Ian Johnstone  Dean ad interim and Professor of International Law, Fletcher School, Tufts University
Richard Martel  Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, CPC
Julie Dzerowicz  Davenport, Lib.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr

Thank you.

Next is MP Gerretsen.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Thank you very much.

Mr. Day, when I last asked you a question, I asked you a question about an article that you were quoted in, "Political Solutions Must Drive the Design and Implementation of Peace Operations”. In that same article, you quoted an observation from 2015 from the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, which stated the following:

Lasting peace is achieved not through military and technical engagements but through political solutions. Political solutions should always guide the design and deployment of UN peace operations. When the momentum behind peace falters, the United Nations, and particularly Member States, must help to mobilize renewed political efforts to keep peace processes on track.

Can you expand on that observation?

12:35 p.m.

Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Adam Day

Yes.

I think what you tend to have in a mission mandate is a broad political agenda that talks about national level reforms building on a peace agreement, the kind of things you see in Congo in 2002 or in the peace agreement that was signed after the election in Mali. Then you have a series of operational tasks that the mission tends to do: neutralizing armed groups, DDR, a whole range of support to humanitarian aid and all of these other things.

What can happen in missions is that those two issues can become bifurcated, and you can think about these operational issues as ends in themselves and keep turning the wheel. But the point is that what we need to do is think about how they contribute to that political objective. Why are you doing DDR with armed groups? It's because that's the outcome of the peace agreement you're looking for.

I think where the UN hasn't necessarily done strategic-level planning in the way that aligns with the HIPPO report is the political tends to sit very high up and often the operational doesn't tend to lead towards it, and you get stuck in situations like Congo, where we have a neutralization of armed groups mandate but I don't see that directly contributing to the political objectives of the mission, per se.

You have a follow-up question; I can tell.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

I do.

What specific recommendations can you give Canada with respect to this? What role can the Government of Canada play in addressing this issue?

12:35 p.m.

Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Adam Day

I think pushing for a Security Council mandating process that is driven from the ground and not driven from New York, advocating that council members send a small team to settings ahead of time and identifying what the meaningful and realistic political objectives are in the short term and medium term, and then informing the mandate with that analysis. Essentially a two-step mandating process, is a really important one. It will avoid these kinds of broad, 40-year horizon Christmas tree mandates where essentially you're not going to get the kinds of reforms you want within the time frame that you ask for.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Is that practical? Do you think it's practical to send that group in advance to determine exactly what that is? You've researched this a lot, what's your take on it? Will it happen?

12:35 p.m.

Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Adam Day

Not only is it practical, but it's actually been done. Ian Martin went to the head of the formal formation of the mission and wrote a report that essentially informed headquarters as to what the viable outcomes could be. Libya fell apart, but that isn't a shortcoming of that process. Actually, that is an example of a relatively low-cost light touch but very effective way to write a mandate.

I think if you would have done a different mandate on Libya without that, there would have been a very different sense of where the political entry points were in the periphery.

Sorry, I see the paper again. I seem to get to the paper fast.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

You're much more obedient than most witnesses who come before the committee.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr

That's a 30-second wind-down. It's almost like a hard stop.

12:35 p.m.

Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr

You have 30 seconds to gracefully wind down, but I will appreciate that this has come to a close.

I'll yield the floor to MP Gerretsen.

October 4th, 2018 / 12:35 p.m.

NDP

Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank our witnesses, for whom our somewhat arcane procedures must seem strange, particularly if you're appearing by video conference, because you can't see who sits on the government side and who sits on the opposition side.

I want to go back to the questions I was asking Mr. Gowan about choices of how Canada participates, and the fourth choice we didn't really get to, and that's participating in coalitions of the willing.

I wonder if you have some comments on the relative merits of UN missions versus coalitions of the willing. We heard from some witnesses that coalitions of the willing often don't focus well on reconstruction and the peace process, and that the UN might be better at that. Do you have comments on that?

12:40 p.m.

Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Richard Gowan

Look, multinational forces and coalitions of the willing are probably the best way to go if you're going into a situation where you want to proactively kill people. You see that in a counterterrorism situation or a situation such as Somalia. It tends to make sense to get together coalitions of countries that are willing to take the risk of high intensity operations and aggressive operations. I think that most UN officials would say that when you're going on the offensive militarily, that is not a job for blue helmets; that is a job for coalitions of the type you describe. In Mali we see the G5 countries setting up a coalition to more proactively pursue jihadis alongside MINUSMA.

Where I think the UN has an advantage is in, as I say, running multi-dimensional robust missions over time, which may use force and may indeed sometimes have to go tactically on the offensive, but have an overall strategic goal of peace-building. That's where I think the blue helmets have an advantage.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC

Mr. Day, do you have any comments on this question of coalitions of the willing versus the UN operations?

12:40 p.m.

Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Adam Day

To be honest, I don't have any direct experience with this on the ground, and so I think Richard's points cover it.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC

Thanks very much.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr

Thank you.

MP Dzerowicz is next.

12:40 p.m.

Davenport, Lib.

Julie Dzerowicz

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Haq mentioned something about trade being very important in African countries, and Canada can play an important role, and so with respect to.... Sorry, I said trade, yes. Trade is very important. I could read your lips there. I know there was a question there.

I wanted to see whether you agreed with that, and if so, as we think about our own objectives about going in, how do we incorporate that as we move forward?

Either one of you can start.

12:40 p.m.

Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Adam Day

That's quite a difficult question, teed up by Ameerah's point.

One of the things that the UN has tried to do particularly in the Horn of Africa is work with the AU so that the political agreements are tied to the economic subagreements. I think there has been some success on that. The AU support office in Addis has worked on that. Tying it to the regional commissions that actually deal with the economics is the key thing, and the UN has built capacities linking to the economic commissions, particularly in East Africa. I don't know as much about the one in West Africa, but my understanding is that some of the work with ECOWAS around some of the conflicts there has actually been directly tied to the economic processes that underlie their community. So I think tying directly into those institutions, maybe placing staff there—the UN has done that kind of partnering directly with them—is the way to tie that together.

One thing I would say is an underutilized resource overall for the UN, and that's the regional economic commissions the UN has. Some of the best analysts about the risks in Syria were actually individuals within ESCWA in Beirut, but it was always individual and I don't think it was tapped. That's underutilized, I think, across the UN system. It could be brought out a bit by member states.

Richard, do you have anything to add?

12:40 p.m.

Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Richard Gowan

Yes, I would actually link this also to Mr. Garrison's comments.

I think it's very important that Canada, when it's putting peacekeepers on the ground, make sure that its bilateral policy fits with its multilateral policy. We quite often see countries deploy peacekeepers but actually take very little interest in the country to which the peacekeepers are deployed. I think one way that you can both promote political processes and also perhaps promote trade is if you ensure that your bilateral embassy in Bamako, if you have one, and other diplomatic missions in the region are clearly tasked with giving as much support as they can to the work of the peacekeeping mission, whether that's through political engagement or through trade promotion, so that Canada is a real presence, not just through its helicopters and personnel, but across the spectrum of engagement.

12:45 p.m.

Davenport, Lib.

Julie Dzerowicz

Thank you.

I think I have less than a minute left. We don't have a lot of time.

Mr. Day, you mentioned in one of your initial comments that jihadi is complicating the peacekeeping process. I want to give you 30 to 45 seconds to talk a little bit about that.

12:45 p.m.

Head of Programmes, Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University

Adam Day

I think I put it "so-called jihadis".

There are a couple of ways. One is they tend to be isolated from the political process. In Mali, for example, there are the compliant armed groups and so-called terrorist armed groups, so it's difficult as a political entry point. The second difficulty that has made it more complex is the asymmetric use of force against civilian populations. You see a lot of use of IEDs and other things that you don't see in a lot of other conflict settings. The third one is, obviously, that the broader international condemnation of these groups makes it much more difficult for the UN to have an entry point for engagement.

I have 30 seconds, so I will add that, even with the most proscribed individuals and groups, the UN tends to find a way to engage with them. When I was in Sudan, Bashir was facing an ICC indictment. We were the only entity that would meet and engage with him. I think that actual engagement is a key value-added for the UN, despite the risks.

12:45 p.m.

Davenport, Lib.

12:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr

MP Martel is next.

12:45 p.m.

Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, CPC

Richard Martel

Mr. Bezan, asked you an interesting question about our troops.

I will continue in French.

While our Canadian blue helmets have good credibility and can be leaders in missions, do you think they can trust our allies as regards protection?

My next question is along the same lines. If our blue helmets are better trained than the others, can we trust our allies to protect us? What do you think?

Could Canada communicate with its allies for the training to be the same?