Canada and the World, Ep. 8: Trump, the UN and women in security

This episode of Canada and the World looks at this week’s events at the United Nations General Assembly and the importance of adding gender to discussions there and elsewhere.

How did US President Donald Trump perform? Was the assembly chuckling with him or at him? What is the state of UN funding? For the sharpest of analyses, we turn to two UN experts, Alistair Edgar, in Waterloo, and Richard Gowan, joining us on a (somewhat crackly!) call from New York. Host Bessma Momani also speaks with Maria Panezi following the Women Foreign Ministers’ Meeting last week in Montreal to discuss why a gender lens — at the UN, in international agreements, and during peacekeeping operations — matters.

Our host

Bessma Momani is professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and University of Waterloo and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. She’s also a non-resident senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. and a Fulbright Scholar. She has been non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and a 2015 Fellow at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. She’s a frequent analyst and expert on international affairs in Canadian and global media. 

This week’s guests

Alistair D. Edgar is the former executive director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), faculty associate and advisory board member at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, and an associate professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University. He joined the BSIA Board as a member in September 2017.

Richard Gowan is a senior fellow at the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research in New York.  He is also a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and teaches at Columbia University.

Maria Panezi is a research fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program. She holds a Ph.D. in Law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, where she was a Nathanson Fellow and a Comparative Law and Political Economy Fellow.

Canada and The World is produced and edited by Matthew Markudis. Each episode can be found on iTunes and other podcast applications.