Canada`s efforts to encourage more women to participate in United Nations peace operations will help transform the nature of these operations, starting with the urgent need to curb sexual violence by the very soldiers sent to protect vulnerable populations, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said.Freeland singled out that initiative Friday as the one that has the potential to bring lasting change to UN peace operations and how they interact with local populations.“I think this is what UN peacekeeping really needs,” Freeland said during an appearance before the Toronto Star editorial board.The Liberal government last month unveiled its long-awaited strategy to support United Nations peace missions.The plan includes pledges to assist with training, a quick-response force to defend other UN troops who increasingly come under attack; and commitments to deploy transport aircraft and helicopters. The Liberal plan had been more than a year in the making and yet offered no details of where Canadian forces might be deployed, frustrating some observers who were hoping to see a commitment to a specific UN operation.Yet Freeland defended Canada’s approach, saying the government was seeking to find ways to transform UN operations over the long-term. “How do we go back to peacekeeping in a way that really makes a positive impact,” she said.Simply contributing 600 troops to a UN peacekeeping force that already numbers some 100,000 worldwide “doesn’t move the dial,” she said.“We frankly wanted to be more ambitious than that. We wanted to think about how we could make peacekeeping better,” Freeland said.She said Canadians feel that “we are called to do a job to try and make the world a better place. . . . For me, peacekeeping is part of that.”Speaking Friday, she singled out the initiatives to involve women in such operations. That includes the pledge of $6 million to UN funds already devoted to incr ...
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