PEACEKEEPING AND PEACEMAKING

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

I would like to thank the organizers and particularly Lily for organizing this forum and you for being here.

Today, peace in the world seems to be almost impossible. The First World War started in 1914 and ended on the 11th of November 1918 at 11:00 a.m. That was to be the war that ended all wars. We know now that many other wars were to follow and in 1939 the Second World War started and lasted until 1945. Both wars were a disaster for the world and they meant the loss of many people. It is estimated that, in the First World War, 8,538,810 soldiers died, out of the 65,000,000 that were mobilized. This does not take into account the almost 8,000,000 soldiers who were imprisoned and missing and the more than 21,000,000 soldiers who were wounded. The casualties, over 37,000,000, were in fact 57.6% of the people who were mobilized.

The dead in the Second World War amount to 72,000,000 people: 47,000,000 of which were civilian, the other 25,000,000 were soldiers.

I was a little girl when the Second World War began. My father, to whom I was very attached, had to go to war and leave behind two little children and a wife. My father, as the rest of my family, was not a militarist. During his compulsory military service he was a horse rider in the Savoy Regiment but the war had no horses and he was sent to send and receive messages on the telegraph in a deserted area of Southern Italy. We were in the north and never knew where my father was. Once in a while he would come home but the job he did was of a confidential nature and nothing ever transpired. He never had to kill anyone and he was thankful for that because he believed in peace and hated the war. In 1943 he returned home but he never wanted to stay inside the house during the raids. He would stay outside and look at what was going on.

Torino, my hometown, is an industrial city. However we happened to live near a hospital and that, I believe, saved us from losing our life. There were some very tragic moments that even a little girl like me felt with intensity and all of this made me hate the war and, as the time went by, I realized how senseless all wars were and I started praying and still do pray for peace.

I came to Canada in 1966 and by then Lester B Pearson was a popular Prime Minister. Being a Liberal at heart, I started respecting this man who had incredible diplomatic skills and who was the individual who, in 1956, proposed that the United Nations send a multinational contingent to the Middle East where the UN General Assembly called for the setting up of an Emergency Force to secure and supervise the cessation of hostilities in the Suez Canal Area. Lester B. Pearson’s vision of a UN peacekeeping force was “a multinational force to separate the combatants, lower tensions, and ultimately mediate negotiations in order to bring lasting peace to the area. And for the first time, a military force was dispatched, not to impose a settlement but to facilitate it.” Canada was part of this military force and the rest is history.

Lester B. Pearson is the only Canadian Nobel Peace Prize recipient. In 1957 in fact he was called to receive his prize. His Nobel lecture was titled: The Four Faces of Peace. It was divided into Peace and Prosperity as, in his lifetime, Mr. Pearson had been working to fight poverty, which he found a “deeper and more important cause of international tensions”. The second chapter was devoted to “Peace and Power” and he spoke about the Peacekeeping Forces. He then went into Peace and Policy and Peace and People. In his lecture Lester B. Pearson gave his vision of life and of the world based on the work he had done in the past.

Some thirty years after this speech, in 1988, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces: a great tribute to a man who spent his life trying to bring peace to the world.

Has the role of the peacekeeping forces worked in the world? What was the role of Canada as a military force?

Canada has a wonderful reputation in the world. Up to very recently it was considered a pacifist country. When, in 1966, I immigrated to Canada with my husband, I was given some literature to read and the first line in such literature was and I quote: “Canada is a pacifist country”. It was good for me, maybe far from my country and family, but good when it came to going and living in a pacifist country. The good reputation, I mentioned earlier, is attributed to Canada not just because of its pacifist stance but also for the sacrifice Canadians have made in the world.

Canada never had a war in its vast territory but Canadians did participate in many wars and many died in World War I and II. World War I saw the death of 66,000 Canadians soldiers, that is the reason why Europe has such great respect for what the Canadians have done in the First World War. In World War II Canada lost 44,000 soldiers. 55,000 were wounded. In 1943 the Canadians landed in Sicily and the Sicilians have not forgotten them.

In 1983, in Vancouver, we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the Canadian landing in Italy and, I must say, it was a great celebration at the barracks on Burrard Street. The Italians in Vancouver were thrilled to participate because they knew what the Canadians had done for them.

Now the Canadians are in Afghanistan. We have already lost 80 people in this senseless war that nobody can win. Our soldiers should be there to do what they do best, and they are also doing: help reconstruct the country. Unfortunately they are in the worst area of Afghanistan and it is very sad to hear of the death of these young men and women who went full of hope to change an unbearable situation and find themselves having to fight and to kill their brothers and sisters. What a waste of human lives!

Does the role of peacekeeping/peacemaking still exist?

I believe it does even if it is not entirely seen as it was in Pearson’s times. The Canadians have distinguished themselves also in this role. There have been some unpleasant mistakes that were made but we are human and, as humans, we make mistakes.
Lester B. Pearson had understood Canadians. We are good-natured, good-tempered, generous and understanding. We love peace and quiet, but we are also always ready to help even in the most difficult circumstances and it seems that even a large portion of those who immigrate to Canada respect the attitude of Canadians.

It is not easy to be optimistic these days. We receive too much information and it is at times hard to watch the news or read the papers. Humanity has not improved. After all, according to American statistics, over one third of humanity has used two thirds of the world resources and two thirds of humanity had to be satisfied with less than one third of the world resources. The time for the two thirds has now come for them to receive what they were deprived of. However, we cannot continue to lose lives.

How do we go back to our peacekeeping/peacemaking role?

At this point the role of the peacekeepers is also defined as Peacebuilding. This refers to activities that seek “to establish the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations” in order to avoid a relapse into conflict. (From the UN Peacekeeping page on the Internet). This is what our soldiers are also doing in Afghanistan. Last year I went to a lecture on the role of Canadians in Afghanistan and it was clear that they are an important part of the peace process even though no-one knows what the final result will be.

How many peacekeepers are now in the world?
The Worldwatch Institute, in a recent article posted on Internet, tells us that in December 2007, there were 84,309 UN soldiers, military observers, and police running operations in 17 countries and if we add to that the civilian staff and the volunteers the total runs to about 106,000. There were also smaller “political and peace-building” missions. However, the article also warns that the non-peacekeeping forces deployed are much larger. About 540,000 troops, of which 394,000 are from the US, are deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other military bases.

It would be great if all the military personnel deployed were only peacekeepers but there are too many interests at work and I can only hope.

I shall conclude with a quote from Lester B Pearson:

WE MUST KEEP ON TRYING TO SOLVE PROBLEMS,
ONE BY ONE, STAGE BY STAGE, IF NOT ON THE BASIS OF
CONFIDENCE AND CO-OPERATION,
AT LEAST ON THAT OF MUTUAL TOLERATION AND
SELF-INTEREST.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I hope you have an answer. I was very privileged to talk to you.

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