Mr. Speaker, the motion before us calls on the government to convene a meeting of “like-minded” nations in order to develop a multilateral plan of action to reform international organizations, so that they can play a more effective role in the area of conflict prevention.
The hon. member has rightly brought to the attention of the House the importance of strengthening the capacity of international organizations to prevent conflict.
Our government, in particular the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is cognizant of the devastating effects of conflicts around the world. Recent events have demonstrated that Canadians are not isolated from international conflict.
Consider the recent Air India hijacking, the kidnapping last year of eight Albertan oil workers in Ecuador, the insidious influence of the illicit drug trade on young Canadians, the impact on Canada of the global traffic in human cargo, and the spectre of terrorist activity in our country. These are all human security threats happening today in Canada or to Canadians.
As members know, the promotion of human security is a foreign policy priority of this government. Human security is a complement to national security which takes the safety and well-being of people as the measure of security.
Canada views conflict prevention paired with good governance and respect for human rights as the best path to follow to achieve sustainable peace and human security and achieve our goals. We are already pursuing these goals in a wide range of international fora.
There are many ongoing efforts to enhance the capacity of the international community to improve conflict prevention. Canada believes that the United Nations must be at the centre of the international community's efforts to prevent conflict.
The charter of the United Nations, with its strong emphasis on “we the peoples”, has as a guiding principle the promotion of human security. We now need to give new meaning to these words, to make the UN's actions more relevant to the security and welfare of individual human beings, in a way, to give the Organization back to the world's people for whom it was founded.
That is why Canada sought election to the United Nations Security Council. The United Nations remains the only global body with nearly universal membership. It has a mandate to assist states to prevent and resolve conflict and build lasting peace. The United Nations Security Council has as its central role the maintenance of peace and security.
Canada has consistently called for greater security council activism on conflict prevention. We welcomed the debate led by our Slovenian colleagues on the security council last November.
Canada called on the security council to embrace a culture of prevention rather than responding once conflict has broke out. We stressed the security council's key role as a deterrent to conflict, in particular through the judicious and timely use of instruments at its disposal. These include peacekeeping interventions, sanctions and the creation of international criminal tribunals.
By ending impunity for war crimes and other human rights abuses, these instruments in turn deter others. Above all, by becoming more responsible to threats to human security, the security council will serve as a more effective tool of conflict prevention.
Out of that important security council debate came a presidential statement in which the security council reaffirmed its responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations to take action on its own initiative in order to maintain international peace and security.
The statement also expressed the security council's intention to support, with appropriate follow-up action of course, efforts to prevent conflict by the UN secretary-general through such areas as fact-finding missions, good offices and other activities requiring action by his envoys and special representatives.
The security council also decided to consider the possibility of a meeting at the level of foreign ministers on the issue of prevention of armed conflicts during the Millennium Assembly, which will be held this fall. Canada, as a member of the security council—and as president next April—remains engaged in the ongoing discussions on this matter.
We reject the argument that the security council should limit its attention to traditionally defined conflicts between states. In this spirit, we participated in the recent open debate of the security council, chaired by the United States, on the impact of AIDS on peace and security in Africa.
Canada's deputy permanent representative to the UN said during the debate that the AIDS pandemic has presented, and continues to present, major challenges to governments, in part because one quarter to one half of African personnel in the health, education, security and civil service sectors are expected to die from AIDS within the next five to ten years.
Not only is this a serious human tragedy, but it is also a tangible threat to peace and order in the affected countries which already confront many other challenges, including civil strife, refugee flows and internal displacement, rapid urbanization and poverty.
A year ago, when Canada assumed the rotating presidency of the security council, we convened an open debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. The meeting was chaired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who identified four challenges facing the security council. These included: the prevention of conflict; ensuring respect for international humanitarian and human rights law; supporting the pursuit of those who violate humanitarian norms and standards; and, finally, addressing the issue of the instruments of war.
Canada was pleased that the security council agreed to ask the secretary-general to prepare a report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. The secretary-general's report was tabled last September. His excellent report identified concrete measures that might be taken to improve the legal and physical protection of civilians in armed conflict, including several practical recommendations for preventing conflict. The secretary-general called for adherence to and ratification, implementation and dissemination of international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law instruments.
He advocated greater responsiveness to the early warning indicators of conflict by making use of human rights information and analysis from independent treaty body experts and the UN Commission on Human Rights. He recommended the establishment of expert working groups of the council to monitor volatile situations and to consider options to prevent the outbreak of violence.
The secretary-general also suggested that the council consider the deployment of preventive peacekeeping operations such as UNPREDEP in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in 1995, or other preventive monitoring presences, and he noted the need to address hate media assets in situations of ongoing conflict. He also identified factors which should trigger action by the security council to protect civilians in the face of massive human rights violations or humanitarian emergencies.
Building on the Canadian drafted resolution adopted in September on this subject, Canada now chairs an informal experts-level working group of the security council which is considering ways to implement the report's recommendations.
We have also provided support for the Lessons Learned Unit within the United Nations to foster the development of guidelines for demilitarization, demobilization and reintegration of combatants during the peace process. In addition, Canada has created CANADEM, a stand-by roster of experts in various peacebuilding skills, who are available on short notice to serve on human rights field missions and in peace support operations around the world.
In conclusion, I wish to reiterate that the government welcomes the interest of the hon. member in the issue of conflict prevention. We do not disagree that the international community must continue to enhance its ability to prevent conflict, including through international organizations. Through the promotion of human security, this government is working at the United Nations, in the G-8 and within a network of states to accomplish just that.
The government is already involved in ongoing efforts, both formal and informal, and involving a broad range of countries aimed at achieving the objective contained in the hon. member's motion. As I have indicated, Canada is at the forefront of these efforts to enhance the international community's conflict prevention capabilities.
For this reason, the government is not convinced that the adoption of this motion calling for the convening of a meeting would be conducive to advancing the important objective of improving the international community's conflict prevention capability.