Should Canada Revisit the Human Security Agenda? /

However, once the Conservatives were elected in 2006, the terminology was shelved, the funding slashed and Canada dropped out of sight internationally as a promoter of the concept.1 The return in October 2015 of a Liberal government that is proud of its forbearers and is eager to recommit to international institutions now makes it worthwhile to look back to the era just before 9/11 and ask a few q [...] Essentially, the human security agenda was a shift in ‘the angle of vision’ away from a state- centric vision of security to one that placed the security of people at the heart of foreign policy. [...] Many of the issues on the agenda were longstanding but had acquired new urgency due to the prevalence in intrastate conflict and state failure in the 1990s. [...] While some progress was made on all them, the most striking successes for Canada were: the Ottawa Treaty to ban anti-personnel landmines; the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court; the two Canadian-sponsored Security Council resolutions mandating the protection of civilians in all United Nations (UN) peace operations; and the Canadian sponsored and funded International Commissi [...] The creation of the Stabilization and Reconstruction program (START) in 2005 enabled DFAIT to fund large-scale initiatives in conflict-affected countries in political and security sectors that fell outside the development priorities of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).