What’s in a name?

CANADEM started with the plan of being a roster of 200 human rights experts modelled on the Norwegian Resource Bank for Democracy and Human Rights.  But we soon held a roster of thousands and became a major deployment partner for the Canadian government.  So the DEM in our name, drawn from Democracy, became misleading even if much of what we do contributes to democracy worldwide.  Our governance capacity building and election observation work are two examples.

To adjust to our enlarged mandate, we are now known as just CANADEM, and are frequently referred to as Canada’s Civilian Reserve.

In a tongue-in-cheek act of historical revisionisms, we now say that CANADEM combines part of CANADA, and adds EM which stands for “Experts Mobilized” ou pour les francophones les Experts Mobilisés, y para los espanoles Expertos Movilizados , German Experten Mobilisiert, Danish eksperter mobiliseret,  Italian Esperti Mobilitati  Norwegian Eksperter Mobiliserte,  Swedish Experter Mobiliserade,  Ukrainian Eksperty Mobilizovani, Pilipino Eksperto Mobilized, Russian Eksperty Mobilizovany …. Time for us to stop!

So what’s in a name?  Hopefully our name is now identified with a large roster of experts for international service and the ability to deploy hundreds of experts on short notice to countries in crisis.  But for those who like to dissect their acronyms, we have Experts and we Mobilize them.

CANADEM Logo: 2010