| United Nations 911 Emergency
Service |
| A Vision of a Western Professor |
| From the RD
News Desk |
| LONDON, ONTARIO -
When a new global initiative to stop genocide is launched at the United
Nations in New York tomorrow, at its core will be the vision of Canadian
professor Peter Langille. The political science professor at The
University of Western Ontario is the architect of a United Nations
Emergency Peace Service and has spent years researching and developing
the concept, case, model and plans, as well as advocating for support
from civil-society organizations, scholars and institutes. |
| Langille's plan, which he often refers
to as 'UN 911 Emergency Service', calls for a permanent UN service made
up of trained civilian, military and police personnel. Members of the
service would be recruited world-wide and deployed rapidly to prevent or
stop armed conflicts before they escalate. |
| "People from around the world
must make it known that they support a UN service of this nature to
prevent genocides such as Rwanda, and the ongoing mass murder in Darfur,"
says Langille. He adds that since the Holocaust many have said
"never again" but there has been insufficient preparation,
feasible plans or even a mechanism to prevent such atrocities. |
| He has continually made the case that
a service of this kind would be reliable and cost-effective, and would
also be capable of responding todiverse emergencies, whether
humanitarian, environmental or health crises. "There is little, if
anything, reliable or even available that is designed to protect
civilians at high-risk," stresses Langille. "With the diverse
global challenges ahead, we simply can't afford the dubious excuses for
long delays and inaction, which have killed millions and cost
billions." |
| Langille first shared his detailed
research in a book published in 2002. Bridging the Commitment-Capacity
Gap received high praise from individuals such as Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate John Polanyi, renowned peacekeeping pioneer Sir Brian Urquhart,
Foreign Affairs Expert and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Lloyd Axworthy and
the former Canadian Senator and Diplomat Douglas Roche. In 2003, an
international conference at the University of California (Santa Barbara)
focused on Langille's research and led to the Working Group for a UN
Emergency Peace Service (UN EPS), as well as an Executive and
Secretariat based in New York. |
| Report Source: |
| http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2006/15/c9552.html |
