How Peacekeeping in the Canadian Context has Changed Over the Past Decades

Canadians strongly believe that peacekeeping is about trying to protect people from extreme harm, a way of providing hope in situations that seem hopeless, and a good method of bringing peace and justice to war-torn countries or failed states. Canadians backing soldiers in their peacekeeping role has been so strong for such a long time that it has generated into their national identity. “Canadians cling to the mythology, born of the 1956 Suez Crisis, that we are a nation of peacekeepers, interposing between belligerent forces bent on war but, even though Canadian government officials and media of the 1990s called the operations in Bosnia and Somalia “peacekeeping missions,” they were something very different from Cold War-era peacekeeping.” Accordingly, over the past several decades, Canadian peacekeeping operations involving their military forces has shifted from a Pearson perspective based on humanitarian intervention to peacekeeping missions entailing massive violence. Therefore, my research paper will focus on how peacekeeping in the Canadian context has changed over the past several decades owing to the Canadian use of its military (internationally) force for extreme violence during peacekeeping missions. I wish to discuss this topic extensively within my research paper by focusing on vivid examples from UN Peacekeeping missions.

“In 1957, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Canadian diplomat Lester B. Pearson for his pivotal role in the creation and deployment of the United Nations Emergency Force to the Sinai, bringing a relatively successful end to the Suez Crisis of 1956, and creating the concept of peacekeeping as it would be understood throughout the Cold War.” This instigated Canada’s dominant role in peacekeeping...

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