Canada has served on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a non-permanent member 8 times, with the most recent being in 2000. For its first 2 terms in the UNSC, Canada took the Commonwealth seat on the council, but since 1967, Canada has run for the Western European and Others Group seat. Canada is a member of Uniting for Consensus, a group that opposes the G4 nations' bids for permanent seats on the Security Council.
Canada was an original member of the United Nations, having previously served in the League of Nations prior to its dissolution. John Peters Humphrey established the Division for Human Rights in the UN Secretariat. Humphrey was also on the Drafting Committee of the International Bill of Rights. The Committee gave the Division for Human Rights the task of creating the first draft of the Bill of Rights, with Humphrey being the preliminary drafter of the document. Humphrey remained a champion of the Bill of Rights until its adoption by approval of the UN General Assembly in 1948.[2][failed verification]
The success of the Suez peacekeeping mission led Canadians to embrace peacekeeping as a suitable role for a middle-sized country, looking for a role, and having high regards for the United Nations. This led to sending a peacekeeping force to Cyprus in 1964, when two NATO members, Greece and Turkey were at swords' point over ethnic violence in the historic British colony. The Canadians left in 1993 after 28 were killed and many wounded in the operation. Peacekeeping help was needed in the Belgian Congo in 1960-64, after Belgium pulled out. There were numerous other small interventions. Canada took a central role in the International Control Commission (ICC), which tried to broker peace in Vietnam in the 1960s.[4] In 1993 violent misbehavior by Canadian peacekeeping forces in Somalia shocked the nation.[5][6]
Canada and the Security Council
Canada has served in the UNSCfor 12 years, thus ranking in the top ten of non-permanent members. As of 2015, it shares the fourth place in the list of non-permanent members serving on the Council by length with Italy. This places Canada behind Brazil and Japan (first place), Argentina (second place), and Colombia, India, and Pakistan (third place). Canada was elected for the following six terms: 1948–49, 1958–59, 1967–68, 1977–78, 1989–90, and 1999–2000 - once every decade. It lost its bid for a seat in the 2010 Security Council elections, to Germany and Portugal, and in the 2020 Security Council elections, to Ireland and Norway.
A site on Navy Island which straddles the U.S.-Canada border was considered as potential site for the UN Headquarters.[9][10] As well as a subsequent proposals following the Iraq invasion to relocate to Montreal[11] in the Canadian province of Quebec.
^Razack, Sherene (2000). "From the 'Clean Snows of Petawawa': The Violence of Canadian Peacekeepers in Somalia". Cultural Anthropology. 15 (1): 127–163. doi:10.1525/can.2000.15.1.127. JSTOR656642.
^Granatstein, J. L. (2012). "The End of Peacekeeping?". Canada's History. Vol. 92, no. 5. pp. 44–51.
^Atwater, Elton (April 1976). "Philadelphia's Quest to Become the Permanent Headquarters of the United Nations". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Pennsylvania: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania; University of Pennsylvania Press. JSTOR20091055.
Carroll, Michael K. (2009). Pearson's Peacekeepers: Canada and the United Nations Emergency Force, 1956-67. University of British Columbia Press. ISBN9780774815819.
Kay, Zachariah (2010). The Diplomacy of Impartiality: Canada and Israel, 1958–1968. Toronto: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN9781554582839.
Stacey, C. P. (1981). Canada and the Age of Conflict, Volume 2: 1921-1948, The Mackenzie King Era. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN9781442659377.
