Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's a pleasure to be with you here today to speak about Canada's involvement in peacekeeping. Though my presentation will include some historical context, I'll try to concentrate on what has changed from conventional peacekeeping and how Canada is working to contribute to a new consensus on the way peacekeeping is done in an era of change.
The fundamental question regarding Canadian involvement in peacekeeping is, why do we do it?
There are three main considerations at play here. Firstly, we support peacekeeping operations for reasons of national interest; secondly, as an expression of our values as Canadians; and thirdly, to be a responsible, burden-sharing member of a rules-based international order.
Today's conflicts, even in remote places, have an effect on all Canadians by allowing extremism and violent crime to take root and by creating ungoverned spaces, which generate flows of refugees or displaced persons and disrupt human and economic development. All nations have an interest in the existence of an effective, multilateral response to conflict, and this means that individual nations have to share responsibilities and shoulder parts of the burden. The UN has embarked upon a period of reflection and renewal in this area, which makes it a particularly important time for Canada to be engaged.
The nature of peacekeeping has evolved considerably over the years. Early missions were characterized by interventions in which combatants were clearly identifiable. In general, the parties agreed to the intervention of a neutral force, while diplomatic talks sought to resolve the conflict.
Today's peacekeeping missions take place in a much different context. Belligerents can be numerous and varied, including not only political actors but also criminals and terrorists who have little interest in peace. Consequently, rather than monitoring a ceasefire or peace agreement, peacekeepers often play the role of a stabilization force, with tasks focused on protecting civilians and helping to create the conditions for peace to emerge. The conditions and objectives of peacekeeping today are thus significantly different from those of previous generations, and the tools for dealing with this constant change have not adequately kept pace.
As the Prime Minister remarked:
Discrete offerings and one-off commitments have gotten us this far, but we won't be able to deliver true, transformative change without a real institutional change. Canada is prepared to help lead that charge.
I will speak later about how Canada's new approach responds to the evolution of peacekeeping and our goal of transformative change.
Right now, I'd like to speak about how the UN itself has commissioned a series of high-level reports in recent years. These reports highlight the need to improve peacekeeping skills and readiness in the face of increasing demands and financial pressures. We have also consistently underscored the point that UN interventions should facilitate political solutions to conflict.
With these findings in mind, the UN Secretary-General has launched an ambitious agenda on peace and security reform, which includes a proposal to restructure the UN peace and security architecture and to shift more resources and efforts in the direction of prevention. This agenda reflects the view that peacekeeping does not operate in a silo. It's part of a continuum of actions that includes peace-building and conflict prevention.
In an effort to assist the UN's efforts to reform and rethink how peacekeeping missions are undertaken, Canada hosted a defence ministerial meeting on UN peacekeeping in Vancouver in November 2017. This was the fifth such meeting since 2014, focusing on efforts to fill critical capability gaps in UN peacekeeping missions and to discuss peacekeeping in francophone environments. The background of this initiative is increasing demands on UN peace operations, with deployments doubling in the past 15 years and upwards of 100,000 uniformed UN personnel currently deployed.
Frankly, the UN is struggling to keep up. The conflicts with which it is confronted and mission mandates issued by the Security Council are increasingly complex, requiring a wider range of skills, assets, and new technology to get the job done in difficult environments. At the same time, the UN is facing pressure for reform, cost savings, and efficiencies in its operations.
In this context, discussions in Vancouver were focused on performance, partnerships, and effectiveness. Canada's theme for the meeting was “doing peacekeeping differently”, that is, encouraging increasing effectiveness of UN peace operations through support for reform, innovation, and smart pledges. Canada announced its new peacekeeping strategy in Vancouver and here are the highlights and a synopsis of what we've accomplished since then.
In Vancouver we launched the Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers, which is now endorsed by 63 countries. Work will begin soon on a Vancouver principles handbook in order to help individual states to develop tailored national training and doctrine, and ultimately, operational guidance on addressing child soldiers in the context of peace operations missions.
Consultations among stakeholders have started regarding another element of our strategy, the Elsie initiative on women in peace operations. Through this initiative, Canada will work with the UN and other member states to develop innovative approaches to overcome barriers to the meaningful participation of women in uniform in UN peace operations. This will include tailored technical assistance packages for one or two police and troop contributing countries. Also included is assistance to select UN missions to which these partner countries deploy to create a receptive environment. Additionally, we're examining a financial mechanism to support the deployment of women peacekeepers. Also, we want to highlight the research, monitoring, and evaluation components to ensure that the components of the pilot initiative are well designed, monitored and evaluated, and adjusted as needed. Canada expects to announce the one or two troop and police contributing countries with which we will be partnering by June of this year.
In Vancouver, the government also announced its intention to support UN operations through the provision, over a five-year time period, of a number of high-value military capabilities as well as through innovative training initiatives. The head of the Canadian Joint Operations Command, Lieutenant-General Bowes, is here with us today and is well placed to elaborate on the nature of these capabilities and their potential uses in a peacekeeping context.
Allow me to set the stage for his remarks by recalling what our government has pledged and by offering some comments about the broader objectives at play. With respect to military capabilities, in Vancouver our government helped to champion a new way of doing business in the provision of military assets for peacekeeping, a smart pledging approach, which means that member states work more closely together to establish a rotation of key enablers, such as aircraft, or to meet collectively a UN training need or an operational requirement. This is meant to improve predictability and planning.
Within this new and evolving construct, Canada specifically offered to provide the following. One is an air task force comprised of armed and utility helicopters and associated personnel. The government announced, on March 19, that it's prepared to deploy this air task force to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, otherwise known as MINUSMA, for a period of 12 months. Tactical airlift support is the second element that was announced. This involves one or two transport aircraft for up to 12 months to the UN's regional service centre in Entebbe, Uganda. Canada has also pledged a unit of approximately 200 personnel and accompanying equipment as part of a quick reaction force. The timing and location of this contribution remains to be determined.
Beyond a provision of specific military capabilities, the government also committed to offer new forms of innovative training, the main objective of which is to meet some of the UN's systemic and specialized training needs, including efforts to augment the role that women play in UN operations. The long-term goal will be to provide training to support the UN, the African Union, and other partner countries including through the use of mobile training teams that can focus on specialized needs in a responsive manner.
Through the Canadian training and advisory team, Canada pledged to work with one or two partner countries before and during a deployment to enhance their contributions to UN peace operations. This will be linked to Canada's Elsie initiative, which, as I mentioned, is designed to overcome the barriers to women's participation in peace operations.
Opportunities to incorporate policing experts into all these activities are also being explored and additional deployments of Canadian police to peacekeeping missions are being examined.
By way of conclusion I'd emphasize several general points about the commitments announced in Vancouver. First, the new Canadian strategy on peacekeeping or peace operations, as it is now more commonly referred to, is about doing things differently, doing things better, and doing things together. All the elements of the Canadian approach respond directly to the findings from high-level reports commissioned by the United Nations.
Second, the pledges made in Vancouver are meant to be mutually reinforcing. We're delivering a number of highly effective operational capabilities to support UN missions, but at the same time we're promoting change in how UN peace operations are conducted, with a particular focus on the participation of women and the issue of child soldiers. Our hope is that Canada's credibility as a direct contributor to UN missions will help to amplify our efforts to shape the evolving norms and practices of peace operations.
Third, Canada's contributions fit with broader international trends in the evolution of peacekeeping, with a greater focus today from nations like Canada on contributions that capitalize on national strengths in relation to what the UN needs as peacekeeping evolves. The days when Canadian peacekeeping was viewed as boots on the ground have largely passed, in part because the UN has been successful in recruiting a broad range of new countries, largely from the global south and China. In part because of the changing nature of conflicts, UN mandates and mission requirements call for a broader range of new capabilities well beyond the boots on the ground.
The strategy and pledges announced in Vancouver reflect and respond to these evolving needs and open a new chapter in Canada's peacekeeping history. The result is both a sophisticated and a pragmatic response to new challenges, and we look forward to continuing to work with the UN and its member states to improve the success of peacekeeping operations.
Thank you.