Liberal MP Wants To Establish An Ambassador Of ‘Women, Peace And Security’

This article explains that Canadian Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj wants Canada to have an ambassador of ‘Women, Peace and Security.’

Read or download the article below, or read the original by iPolitics here.

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Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj wants Canada to have an ambassador of ‘Women, Peace and Security.’

Wrzesnewskyj introduced a private members’ motion M-163 Thursday calling for the creation of the position.

“Canada has played an important role in the tradition of peacekeeping, peace-making and peacebuilding,” said Wrzesnewskyj in a release issued to reporters Friday.

“This has included the crafting of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, creating a UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, championing the elimination of anti-personnel land mines…and initiating and advocating for the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.”

Now it’s time to establish the office of an “Ambassador of Women, Peace and Security,” he stated.

Wrzesnewskyj’s initiative gained the attention of Nadia Murad, a human rights activist, author, Yazidi genocide survivor and the United Nation’s first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking.

“Appointing an Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security will place Canada at the forefront of a safer, more peaceful and just world. It will send a message to vulnerable people around the world, especially women, suffering from war and genocide that they are not alone,” stated Murad in the same release.

The ambassador would focus on “leading the implementation of Canada’s integrated, whole-of-government 2017-2022 Action Plan,” states the release.

The office would partner with government departments to promote gender equity, it would work to adopt a gender perspective into peacebuilding and peacekeeping which would include greater participation of women in peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives.

The Etobicoke Centre MP has also been advocated for the creation of a Department of Peace.

“I have had the gut-wrenching experience of travelling into war and civil war zones, and anarchic warlord-controlled regions…Whether in Darfur, the traditional territories of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq, or most recently in Myanmar; largely it’s men who do the killing and women who bear the suffering,” said Wrzesnewskyj.