Canadian envoy in Cyprus to draw on its experience accommodating needs of women migrants and minors

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Canada is drawing on Cyprus ' experience of accommodating the needs of women migrants and children and those fleeing regional conflict zones at a time of unprecedented global displacement, the Canadian envoy on women, peace and security said Wednesday.

The North American country is one of around a dozen others that signed bilateral agreements with Cyprus to briefly host their citizens evacuated from neighboring countries until they’re repatriated. Fears that the Israel-Hamas war may spread in the region have spiked in recent months.

Cyprus had helped repatriate nearly 60,000 third-country nationals evacuated from Lebanon in 2006 and had done the same last year with evacuees from Sudan.

Ambassador Jacqueline O’Neill said her meetings with Cypriot officials provided valuable lessons that Canadian authorities can apply in future operations when repatriating citizens, particularly pregnant women and unaccompanied minors. She also said both countries need to consider how to best address their wants, including appropriate facilities on ships, specialized medical assistance, and setting up separate accommodations for women in transit to their home country.

“For better or for worse, Cyprus has a great deal of experience receiving migrants,” O’Neill told the Associated Press in an interview.

“Keeping citizens secure doesn’t mean just putting them all in one place and holding them there until we put them all on one plane,” O’Neill said. “It’s about making sure that their experience meets their needs of the moment.”

The Canadian envoy also met with Cypriot women’s groups seeking a greater say in efforts to solve the island’s 50-year-old ethnic division that transpired after the Turkish invasion in wake of a coup aiming at union with Greece. Since then, United Nations-brokered negotiations have been dominated by male representatives.

O’Neill pointed to statistics showing that peace agreements are 35% more likely to endure at least 15 years if women are meaningfully involved in negotiations.

“Communities almost everywhere are 50% women. Why should we have people making decisions for that community that don’t have the 50% of those people being around and influencing it,” she said.

Women aren’t “inherently more peaceful” than men, O’Neill said, but they bring new perspectives and expand the range of issues being discussed in any peace process because of their lived experiences like having children, caring for family members and in many parts of the world being in charge of the household.

“It’s about saying the best decisions, the best outcomes come when the people who are most affected by those decisions have a voice in making them so when they’re closest to the people who are affected by them, the whole process is strengthened,” she said.