Peacekeeping: Here’s how Canada lost its way

Peacekeeping is not what it used to be. Wars are not what they used to be. Nor is the world, for that matter.

Such was the understanding behind the United Nations’ Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial Summit in Vancouver this week. Whereas the UN mandate to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” is what originally led to peacekeeping operations, member states seem to now have other ideas about it. Canada definitely does.

It used to be that countries aligned themselves with peacekeeping operations based on the scale of the conflict and the need to save lives, regardless of where. At least that was Lester Pearson’s vision. Now, contributing nations would prefer to align themselves with conflicts in which they will lose the least, or perhaps gain the most. Perhaps that was the thinking behind Canada’s hesitation leading up to the summit. But all is clear now. The Vancouver Summit did result in an international military-led gender champion network led by Canada, the United Kingdom and Bangladesh; Canada’s women peace and security plan, to protect women and sexual assault victims in conflict zones; and the Elsie Initiative to induct more women in peacekeeping operations. And an assortment of hardware. With no real plan behind any of it.

It is clear that the role of peacekeeping is slowly waning in the world, as is that of the UN in global conflict resolution and international security. Because it has become impossible to separate issues of conflict, human rights and economics from each other; geopolitics has sealed them tightly together.

Sadly, human lives are no longer what influence a country’s commitment to peace. Rather, it is the protection of one’s own borders from threats thousands of miles away. Threats which we now know are not actually played out on battlefields, but in political enclaves. Otherwise, Canada would have unflinchingly intervened to avert the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, or the Yemen crisis, or even the impending Central African Republic genocide. Apparently, some wars are more politically or economically important than others.

So when Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan earlier said that Canada has to get “better at preventing conflict in the first place,” it sounds a bit out of place.

This has been the linchpin of post-9/11 development assistance efforts, which hypothesize that the more you invest in a country’s social future, the less chance that country will destabilize and start a war.

Barring the fact that such a hypothesis is flawed — wars often erupt not because people are illiterate or do not have access to health care, but because someone wants more power — such investments rarely yield short-term or immediate returns.

But Canada is not even following that flawed hypothesis. Its defence budget still stands at $18.6 billion for 2016-17, while its development assistance budget is only $5.4 billion, including humanitarian assistance, which has flip-flopped between maternal and neo-natal health, extractive industries and, currently, “feminist” aid.

And it’s not even showing in this feminist agenda. The Canadian Armed Forces, of which women comprise 14.8 per cent, have not been able to lead in actually inducting more women as peacekeepers. Countries such as India produced the world’s first all-female UN peacekeeping unit in 2007 and Bangladesh contributed 160 female peacekeepers to the world’s first all-woman, predominantly Muslim peacekeeping unit. And neither country is known for particularly gender-friendly policies.

Even my own country of origin, Pakistan, a troubled nation, is among the highest contributors to UN peacekeeping operations since the 1960s, with 8,000 Pakistani forces currently contributing to seven missions globally.

Granted, peacekeeping has become exceedingly dangerous. But conflict has always been dangerous. And if Canada does not want to send its troops into places where “there is no peace to keep,” then perhaps it should just stay out of peacekeeping altogether. But then neither should it expect to win a seat on the UN Security Council in 2021.

Peacekeeping should be the one area where geopolitics are completely invisible. Where other people’s lives should be the priority. And it comes with sacrifice, not with promises of feminist aid or feminist foreign policies. But as the war on resources isn’t about to end anywhere soon, neither is the loss of human life.

It’s time we focused on how to make that stop rather than on how to just look good on paper. Themrise Khan is an Ottawabased independent professional specializing in global development, social policy and migration. She blogs at: www. lamehdood.wordpress.com