NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Canada is using Cyprus “experience in meeting the needs of migrant women and children and people fleeing regional conflict zones at a time of unprecedented global displacement, Canada’s envoy for women, peace and security said Wednesday.
The North American country is one of about a dozen other countries that have signed bilateral agreements with Cyprus to temporarily house their citizens evacuated from neighboring countries until they are repatriated. Fears that the Israel-Hamas The risk of war spreading in the region has increased in recent months.
Cyprus assisted in the repatriation of nearly 60,000 third-country nationals evacuated from Lebanon in 2006, and did the same with evacuees from Sudan last year.
Ambassador Jacqueline O’Neill said her meetings with Cypriot officials provided valuable lessons that Canadian authorities can apply in future operations to repatriate citizens, particularly pregnant women and unaccompanied minors. She also said both countries should consider how best to accommodate their needs, including adequate facilities on ships, specialized medical care and setting up separate accommodations for women in transit to their home countries.
“For better or worse, Cyprus has a lot of experience in receiving migrants,” O’Neill told The Associated Press in an interview.
“Keeping citizens safe doesn’t mean we put them all in one place and hold them there until we put them all on one plane,” O’Neill said. “It’s about making sure their experience meets their needs in the moment.”
The Canadian envoy also met Cypriot women’s groups seeking greater participation in efforts to resolve the island’s 50-year-old ethnic divisions that emerged after the Turkish invasion in the wake of a coup aimed at union with Greece. Since then, the UN-mediated negotiations have been dominated by male representatives.
O’Neill pointed to statistics showing that peace agreements are 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years if women are meaningfully involved in negotiations.
“Communities are almost everywhere 50% female. Why should we have people making decisions for that community when that 50% of those people are not there and have no influence over it,” she said.
Women are not “naturally more peace-loving” than men, O’Neill said, but they bring new perspectives and broaden the range of issues discussed in any peace process because of their life experiences, such as having children, caring for family members and, in many parts of the world, being responsible for the home.
“The point is that the best decisions, the best outcomes, come when the people who are most affected by those decisions have a voice in them. When they are closest to the people who are affected by them, the whole process is amplified,” she said.