Canada and peacekeeping

MYTH: Canada is a world leader where United Nations peacekeeping is concerned.
FACT: The term peacekeeping entered the popular vocabulary in 1956. During the Suez Crisis that year, Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson – later Canada's 14th Prime Minister – proposed that a multinational UN peacekeeping force be sent to the Suez to separate the warring parties. For his visionary idea, Pearson was awarded the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize.
There have now been 63 UN peacekeeping operations, and in the early years, Canada supplied troops to almost every one of them. That is no longer the case. Currently, the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, with the support of the Department of Field Support, manages 17 operations deployed across five continents. These operations comprise more than 100,000 military, police and civilian personnel.
In February 2010, only 160 of them were Canadians, about one fifth of one per cent of the total.
The leaders in troop provision for UN peacekeeping operations are Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Even Austria, Belgium and Ireland outstrip the Canadian contribution. Sierra Leone, where Canada did have peacekeepers a few years ago, is now contributing more troops to UN operations around the world than Canada.
Canada’s contribution to UN peacekeeping, long in decline, is now a disgrace.
And thanks to Afghanistan we are now better known in the world for our war-fighting than our peacekeeping.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
UN peacekeeping suffered many failures and setbacks during the 1980s and 1990s, but recent successes in Chad, Burundi, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic and Cambodia demonstrate that it can be highly effective under reinvigorated UN leadership, when combining troops with peacebuilding experts, development assistance and civilian reform of the police and judiciary.
Traditional peacekeeping, the myth-sustaining kind for Canadians, is a rarity in today’s world. Instead, tens of thousands of soldiers, police and civilians, most of them from developing countries, are on the front line of dozens of multi-faceted peace operations led by the United Nations and regional organizations, where roles vary from battling armed gangs and insurgents to helping with election security to training local police.
Canadian troops have served with distinction in NATO-led operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and Canada is one of the few non-Security Council members with an expeditionary military capacity. Canada has demonstrated in Afghanistan that our military can fight, and our deployment to Haiti shows that we can move quickly.
Canada could, and should again be a leader in UN peacekeeping operations, but this will require boots on the ground. As a leader Canada could help in setting the peacekeeping agenda, making the UN more effective and contributing to more sustainable long-term peace in areas where this has been in short supply for a generation.