No UN mission for Canada yet but there will be a peacekeeping conference in Vancouver

David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a Global Compact Luncheon at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Monday, Sept. 19, 2016.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick ORG XMIT: SKP107

The Liberal government’s promise that the Canadian military will make a significant contribution to a United Nations mission seems to have gone nowhere.
There’s not a lot of talk about that promise any more, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says such a contribution is still being examined.

So what can Canada contribute to the UN in the meantime?

Cue the UN conference.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Wednesday to launch the “2017 UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial.”
The conference will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, on November 14-15 and will involve around 500 delegates from 70 countries.

The 2017 UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial will review current contributions by UN members, and “secure pledges to meet the current and future needs of
UN peacekeeping operations,” according to the Department of National Defence.

“We are committed to increasing our engagement in peace support operations,” Sajjan said in a statement. “The 2017 UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial is
one component of our engagement with the UN and I look forward to welcoming defence counterparts to Canada later this year.”

Ten countries will serve as co-hosts for the 2017 UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Japan, Netherlands, Pakistan, Rwanda,
Uruguay, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

On November 14, Canada will host a series of events called “Focus on Peacekeeping”. While not a part of the official conference, these events will complement the
Ministerial, they will be geared towards a broad audience, and will explore several different themes to underline the importance of a comprehensive approach to
peacekeeping.

•On November 15, four plenary sessions will be held on:

Integration of gender perspectives into peacekeeping: How to empower women, and take gender perspectives into account in all aspects of peacekeeping,
to achieve better results on the ground.

Innovation in training and capacity building: How to strengthen partnerships between UN, troop- and police-contributing countries, and other actors, to improve
outcomes of peacekeeping operations.

Protecting those at risk: How to ensure that high-level strategies align with the realities on the ground, while acknowledging that the success of UN peacekeeping
should be measured by its impact on those we seek to protect.

Early warning and rapid deployment: How to better identify and analyze emerging conflicts, while making sure key decision makers are informed in a timely
manner so they can plan their response more quickly. During the Ministerial, Member States will also provide new pledges to meet the UN’s rapid deployment
requirement for 2017-18.

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