0:05 Okay, this is lesson 5B or 5.2
0:08 on the United Nations. An introduction,
0:10 a primer,
0:12 basic information to know about
0:15 peacekeeping as a Canadian. Things that
0:18 you need to know in order to understand
0:21 how to become a diplomat.
0:28 Okay. So, I'm going to erase my picture
0:30 because I need all the space that I can
0:32 for words and it takes me a long time to
0:34 readjust all the words, save everything
0:37 again, and so on. So, here we're talking
0:40 about the UN charter and its preamble to
0:43 save succeeding generations from the
0:45 scourge of war. This is the basic
0:47 principle that highlights the
0:50 organization's commitment to preventing
0:52 future conflicts and promoting lasting
0:55 peace. So, the United Nations was not
0:57 put together for defense or liberty or
0:59 to encourage, I don't know, lower
1:01 tariffs. The United Nations was founded
1:04 to save future generations from the
1:08 horror of warfare. And I'm getting mad
1:10 because we're talking about horror in
1:13 Ukraine, horror in Gaza Strip, horror in
1:16 Israel, horror in in Somalia, all around
1:18 the world.
1:20 Anyway, I tried to get a UN ambassador
1:22 and if I'm looking a little frazzled,
1:25 it's because I really was hoping to get
1:27 this person and I failed. I'm going to
1:30 really try to get Bob Ray. Let's keep
1:40 Anyway, uh I want to say very much very
1:42 important is people who can deal with
1:45 exact wording succeed at the UN. They
1:47 they can listen to the nuance. They
1:49 understand the languages. They focus on
1:52 the exact wording and the exact meaning.
1:54 They tend to argue about small changes
1:57 of wording and changes. That's really
2:00 important to them and would be far more
2:01 important than you would ever expect.
2:04 For example, in the business world or
2:06 anywhere else at universities and so on.
2:09 So keep that in mind. Let's go on to the
2:11 next slide.
2:13 Ray Aerson, she's actually from Euron
2:15 College. She learned to write at Euron.
2:18 Congratulations. Okay, moving on.
2:19 Talking about the blue helmets of the
2:22 peacekeepers, the white tanks, and the
2:26 current UN ambassador, Bob Ray, uh, who
2:28 was an NDPRE, but is now the, uh,
2:31 appointed by the Liberal government to
2:32 be the ambassador. You can see him
2:35 there. And there's another picture of
2:37 him in front of the UN flag. So the UN
2:40 flag is blue and the main conflict
2:43 provisions are in chapters six and seven
2:47 of the UN ch uh charter.
2:49 Let's talk about chapter six which
2:51 encourages member states to resolve
2:54 their disputes by different methods and
2:58 these might be negotiation, mediation,
3:01 they might be arbitration.
3:03 Think of these as different ways to
3:06 resolve conflict and they have their
3:09 other peaceful means. So these are
3:12 approaches that are valid and they are
3:14 representative of peaceful dispute
3:19 resolution, not threats and war.
3:22 Chapter 7 of the UN charter is is is key
3:24 to the UN's collective security
3:26 function. The UN is a collective
3:28 security organization. It's not a
3:31 collective defense organization. So
3:33 under chapter 7 of the charter, the UN
3:36 Security Council can call on member
3:38 states to implement measures that do not
3:41 involve the use of force, such as a
3:44 ceasefire. Um measures often take the
3:46 form of sanctions, and Demian Plaov will
3:48 talk to us about these sanctions against
3:50 Russia and many other countries that
3:53 he's involved in imposing. Uh that's
3:54 another guest speaker that we have that
3:57 I'm excited about coming to talk about
3:59 embargos, restrictions on financial
4:01 interactions and restriction on access
4:06 to overseas assets which has been done.
4:09 Okay. Article 4 can be invoked. This is
4:11 the article of the UN charter that
4:14 permits the security council to actually
4:17 authorize the use of force including
4:20 armed peacekeepers if non-military
4:23 measures prove inadequate. How can those
4:27 actions take place by air, sea, or land
4:29 such as demonstrations, blockades, and
4:32 other operations that are carried out by
4:36 UN member states to maintain or restore
4:38 international peace and security? Peace
4:40 and security.
4:44 What does invoked mean?
4:47 Uh, invoked means to site or appeal to
4:49 something as an authority. So I put a
4:52 picture here of Antonio Guterres, the
4:54 current section Chan, and here he is
4:57 invoking. Uh so they're considered to to
5:00 to be trying to they're in authority and
5:02 they're trying to make an argument.
5:04 Here's some uh diplomats arguing about
5:07 the wording for invoking. They're
5:09 arguing. I mean, that's what it is at
5:10 the UN. You can see them with these
5:13 pieces of paper arguing. It's quite cool.
5:15 cool.
5:16 Here's UN Secretary General Antonio
5:19 Gutire. He invoked uh article 99 which
5:22 has hardly ever been invoked before. Um
5:26 indeed according to the UN spokesperson
5:28 um it has not been used for decades.
5:31 Gutteras reiterated his appeal for a
5:34 humanitarian uh ceasefire in the Gaza
5:38 Strip under article 99 of the UN charter
5:40 uh in order and this was urgent because
5:42 the he argued the civilian population
5:44 must be spared from greater harm. Well,
5:51 The Department of Peacekeeping
5:53 operations could have been invoked and
5:56 brought into the Gaza Strip or it could
5:58 uh be invoked in uh any kind of
6:01 conflict. Nepal uh we'll talk more about
6:03 the different UN peacekeeping operations
6:06 currently, but DPKO is where Ambassador
6:08 Peggy Mason has worked for many years.
6:11 She's very very familiar with it. and uh
6:12 she's going to talk to us about
6:15 different peacekeeping operations. Right
6:19 now there's 11 of them led by DPKO.
6:21 They always say DPKO and this is notable
6:23 given that peacekeeping was never
6:25 actually explicitly mentioned in the UN
6:28 charter. Yet it's the cornerstone. It's
6:30 extremely important to the UN's efforts
6:32 to maintain international and peace and security.
6:35 security.
6:37 This is a very useful site, the United
6:39 Nations peacekeeping or what is
6:41 peacekeeping for learning about UN
6:43 peacekeeping? And it changes very
6:44 frequently. For example, last year's
6:47 course notes say that there were are uh
6:49 12 peacekeeping operations. Now there's
6:52 11. And if you select 12 on the quiz,
6:55 well then it's wrong. And so it's very
6:57 important to listen to the lectures and
7:00 update your notes. Don't rely on notes
7:04 from previous years.
7:06 I have talked for years about UNF1 and
7:09 that's because uh it's a very famous
7:12 crisis uh involving the Hungarian crisis
7:16 and the Suez crisis and Dr. Dorne will
7:18 explain it in a bit more detail, I'm
7:20 hoping, but that was the first United
7:23 Nations emergency force called UNF1. And
7:25 that was the first time that
7:27 peacekeeping forces were used. Canada
7:30 actually uh uh contributed forces to UNF1.
7:37 Canada contributed forces because of uh
7:39 at he wasn't prime minister yet, but uh
7:41 Lester B. Pearson was a diplomat who
7:43 provided a draft resolution and
7:46 presented it to the general assembly for
7:48 approval and that was he wrote it and
7:50 that move was pivotal in the development
7:54 of modern peacekeeping efforts. Canada
7:56 eventually got actually the Nobel Peace
8:00 Prize in 1958 for proposing a UN
8:02 peacekeeping force. So there's uh uh
8:06 Pearson uh with the Nobel Peace Prize
8:09 back in 1958 be well before he became
8:11 prime minister.
8:14 What about traditional first generation
8:16 peacekeeping? We we don't use this
8:19 nomclature so much anymore but uh
8:22 perhaps uh Peggy will say first, second,
8:24 third, fourth generation peacekeeping.
8:26 Uh let's talk about what that is.
8:29 Traditional peacekeeping.
8:31 traditional uh first generation
8:34 peacekeeping was uh impartial. So both
8:37 sides were supposed to be uh neutral or
8:39 all sides were supposed to remain
8:42 neutral. Um now peacekeepers can be
8:44 fighting for the state or against
8:47 rebels. They may not be neutral but then
8:48 back then they were supposed to be
8:51 neutral. Back then they were supposed to
8:53 be lightly armed. That meant that they
8:56 were not armed with uh guns or tanks.
8:58 They were supposed to be actually
9:00 minimal. Um, and in the end, some
9:02 peacekeepers got hacked to death in
9:05 along the North Korean demilitarized
9:07 zone. I saw that that area myself. Um,
9:10 because they were not def able to defend
9:12 themselves. It also used to require all
9:15 parties approval. Uh, for example, in
9:17 Cyprus, all the parties, Turkey and
9:19 Greece were supposed to be in agreement
9:21 for the peacekeeping force. And it's
9:24 supposed to be non-territorial in that
9:25 it's supposed to avoid seizing
9:27 territory, but now it can. So
9:29 peacekeeping has definitely evolved from
9:36 And what is the second generation? The
9:38 second generation beginning in the
9:40 1990s, this is kind of the height of
9:43 peacekeeping in the world. 1990s 95,
9:46 third generation here. Um basically they
9:49 expanded it to include enforcement which
9:50 some people will say is robust
9:52 peacekeeping and some people will call
9:55 modern peacekeeping where it's much more
9:59 uh robust much more um violent. And then
10:01 third generation is more complex and
10:03 focuses on peace building. A lot of
10:05 people don't use third generation very
10:08 properly. And then fourth generation is
10:10 when you're trying to build a state.
10:12 you're trying like Afghanistan and
10:14 you're trying to build in all sorts of
10:16 electoral activities and voting. Uh
10:18 you're having regional organizations
10:20 involved and so on. So most peacekeeping
10:24 now is fourth generation.
10:26 But let's go back to second generation.
10:27 So second generation modern
10:29 peacekeeping. Here you can see that they
10:32 are armed. They may not be neutral. They
10:35 are deployed between states or within
10:38 states. uh they can operate without
10:40 consent if no central government agrees
10:42 to it like in Afghanistan there was no
10:45 central government u uh for a while they
10:48 can use force and then they can be
10:51 deployed doing electoral monitoring or
10:53 humanitarian relief Dr. Dorne has a
10:56 great deal of experience uh on electoral
11:00 support, humanitarian operations in um
11:02 uh I can't quite remember what if it was
11:04 Nepal. I can't quite remember where. Oh,
11:07 East Teour. He was involved in the
11:11 election in in East Teour.
11:12 He might tell you about that because it
11:14 was extremely disturbing. Uh he was on
11:17 CBC radio when he was in East Teour and
11:19 watched people being burned alive in a
11:21 church. I'm not sure that we'll talk
11:23 about that. But let's talk about Unimir.
11:26 Unimir Unimir which some people say was
11:30 a total failure uh because it pre it
11:32 failed to prevent the genocide in
11:36 Rwanda. So was it a failure?
11:39 The genocide in in Rwanda. Um okay. So
11:41 following the creation of a well here's
11:44 Romeo Delair who was the general in
11:46 charge of the peacekeeping operation who
11:48 happened to be a Canadian general Romeo
11:52 Delair and he appealed to the UN for
11:56 peacekeeping troops for for anything for
11:59 any kind of crew uh help um in the
12:02 operation. And so how many did he get if
12:04 this was a multiple choice question?
12:06 Zero. We got absolutely zero. No
12:09 countries committed to try to prevent
12:11 the genocide in Rwanda. Zero. No
12:13 countries. I say that with great
12:14 emphasis because at that time it was
12:18 just a terrible, terrible situation.
12:21 Terrible. In October 1993, 6 months
12:24 after he's still calling for troops,
12:28 Unimir deployed 550 troops. So how many
12:30 troops did the UN deploy in Rwanda in
12:33 the end? 550 people. That's it. You'd
12:35 think that there would have the world
12:37 would have come to their aid and had
12:39 would have deployed as many as in
12:42 Afghanistan that tens of thousands but
12:45 no only 550 people.
12:48 Now Romeo Delair says that he could have
12:51 prevented Rwanda's genocide with just
12:53 5,000 troops if if the United Nations
12:56 had said that. And he was quite
12:59 traumatized by that. uh he has what's
13:01 called post-traumatic stress disorder,
13:04 PTSD. And this is a mental health
13:07 disorder due to having uh witnessed the
13:09 genocide and and literally thousands of
13:13 people being killed, driving through uh
13:15 streets of of tortured and killed
13:18 people. Um
13:20 I put a picture here of Thinker's Lodge,
13:22 which is in Nova Scotia, which is run by
13:23 the International Pugwash Movement and
13:26 the Canadian government. And I was at a
13:28 conference with Romeo Delair seated
13:30 right there and I'm an early riser. I
13:32 was up at about 5:00 in the morning and
13:34 he came out and was talking to me right
13:36 there and he said he can't couldn't
13:39 sleep. He often that just the images of
13:42 all the uh slaughtered people uh kept
13:45 him awake.
13:49 Okay. So Canada uh decided uh to put
13:51 together a proposal for a rapid reaction
13:54 capability for the UN. And this was a
13:56 proposal that was presented by the
13:58 government of Canada to the United
14:00 Nations, but the United States opposed
14:03 it and and behind the scenes um pushed
14:06 countries to vote against it. I was very
14:08 intimately involved in in the writing of
14:11 this in Montabelloo and that was due to
14:13 my work on the peacekeeping training
14:17 center. But um also the report is still
14:18 I think interesting but you don't have
14:21 to look at it.
14:22 I've worked on a whole bunch of
14:23 different proposals to do with
14:26 peacekeeping and I I was making a list
14:30 here um since 1991 and even a few weeks
14:32 ago I wrote an article for the Glob and
14:35 Mail on um 2024 peacekeeping force could
14:37 be the innovation the Canada US border
14:40 needs which the Glob and Mail published.
14:43 Uh so I've worked on a UN UNEP's
14:45 emergency force the responsibility RT
14:50 R2P and so on. So, when I talk to Peggy,
14:51 um, we do tend to use the language of
14:53 peacekeeping a bit, and this primer
14:56 gives you some of those words ahead of a
14:58 time. I'm not expecting you to be an
14:59 expert on peacekeeping, but I want you
15:02 to to be enthusiastic about something
15:05 like that.
15:07 Okay? What would you contribute? Let's
15:08 say you were a country or you're acting
15:11 on behalf of a delegation. Um, you can
15:14 look at the CIA world factbook and it
15:16 will give you the uh numbers of military
15:18 personnel and the kind of equipment that
15:20 your country has. Let's say you're
15:22 representing Chad or you or something
15:25 like that. Um, so let's say if you're a
15:26 country, pretend you're a country, I
15:28 don't know what country you want to be,
15:31 India, Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago.
15:33 take a look at the CIA World Factbook
15:36 and then ask yourself what forces and
15:38 capabilities you might be willing to
15:40 make to available to the UN on short
15:42 notice. I'm very curious what you think,
15:44 but of course with a multiple choice
15:47 exam and with so many students and and
15:51 really no help um to mark zero um and
15:52 also I'm not supposed to ask you to
15:54 write anything. I I can't get your
15:56 opinions. I don't know like on behalf of
15:59 Haiti what would you offer? don't have
16:02 much um for the UN peacekeeping force.
16:03 Who's in charge of that now? Uh John
16:06 Manza, Dr. John Manza who came to our
16:09 class is in charge of the Canada United
16:12 States France force to help Haiti. Haiti
16:15 has no resources. Uh so what would we
16:16 contribute? What would the UN you know
16:19 what could you give? Um instead of uh
16:21 just just think about what you would
16:23 give on behalf of a country even like Canada.
16:25 Canada.
16:29 Okay, I think that's it. Um, oh, I I
16:30 decide to ask chat and this what's my
16:33 lesson here, chat? Let's say if we had a
16:35 multiplechoice question and you could
16:36 answer it. Well, what would chat? Of
16:39 course, it's very general um it's very
16:42 agreeable and it's it doesn't really um
16:45 tell us anything here. But that's the
16:47 other problem with multiplechoice um and
16:49 chat is chat will give these sorts of answers.
16:52 answers.
16:53 Okay, so that wasn't the end of my
16:55 lecture because now I remember I had
16:58 this very important picture of the UN um
17:00 constantly undergoing restoration. And
17:04 here um I think that it is very
17:05 important to state that if we didn't
17:08 have the UN, we'd have to invent it. And
17:10 people always say that Bob Ray and
17:13 others that the United Nations, sure
17:15 there are a lot of problems. There's
17:17 lack of funding. Uh there's division.
17:20 The charter is has no uh police force.
17:22 But the UN is a place for different
17:24 countries and ideologies to talk. We
17:26 can't expect a lot of action. They just
17:28 don't have their resources. They don't
17:30 have the armed personnel. But it is a
17:33 place to talk a lot. And so here, this
17:35 is I took this photo standing uh talking
17:38 to Guy Roberts who'd come from NATO. Uh
17:40 and I was there because of the United
17:42 Nations. And so we were chatting here
17:45 talking. And I took the picture because
17:49 then he saw Rebecca coming toward him uh
17:50 at full speed because she saw because
17:52 he's from the United States, he's in
17:54 favor of deterrence and she's from the
17:58 United Kingdom and she's was oh um in in
18:00 favor of nuclear abolition and he
18:02 actually started he grabbed me by the
18:04 elbow and we he started dragging me
18:06 running in the opposite direction away
18:08 from Rebecca. And I always remember that
18:09 because I was wearing high heels. I've
18:11 learned since then not to wear high
18:14 heels at the UN because you want to talk
18:17 a lot and it's all talk, no walk
18:18 according to Trump. But I think it's
18:20 still a valuable place. It's a talk shop
18:22 for the world, a global cafeteria. It's
18:25 sort of a form of a global comments.
18:28 Thank you for listening. I I hope my
