I guess deaths on UN-run missions are more noble...

...than those on the Security Council-mandated NATO mission in Afstan. That seems to be the sub-text of what a professor is saying:

The annual death toll for soldiers in UN peacekeeping operations has steadily declined since the end of the Cold War, but Canada has secured second spot in the world for number of fatalities, a new study has found.

The report by Walter Dorn, professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College in Toronto [?!?--actually at the Canadian Forces College, Toronto, too, amazing reportorial and editorial ignorance, or maybe not]...

"I think the UN is learning how to deal with conflicting parties and how to deal with counter-insurgencies," he told Sun Media in an interview. "They have had horrendous times in the past, when you think of Somalia, Bosnia, Cambodia and Sierra Leone. In all of those cases there were insurgents fighting the government and the UN has taken a wiser, more inclusive approach -- it takes longer, it takes more patience, but it isn't as aggressive."

Other tactics such as convincing insurgents to switch sides or turn themselves in have proven better for longer-term success, he said.

"This shows that the patient, long-term commitment is the one that succeeds -- rather than the search-and-destroy missions that are only creating more resistance," he said...

Over UN history, Canada has lost 114 peacekeepers. The high number reflects Canada's long tradition of being among the biggest suppliers of UN troops, yet that contribution has shrunk considerably since the major deployment to Afghanistan.

There, the Canadian death toll has climbed to 71.

'SERIOUS DECREASE'

"When we went into Afghanistan, we made a serious decrease. We're now 60th in the UN peacekeepers list, and before we were No. 1," he said.

Dorn crunched the numbers for more than 60 UN peacekeeping operations, which he describes as impartial, long-term missions that use force only for defence, compared to the Afghan mission where there is combat with a declared enemy...

I'm amazed the reporter didn't get a quote from Steve Staples (one below is from April 2006, see end of link):

...
Once a top 10 contributor of soldiers to UN peacekeeping, today we can fit all our Blue Helmets onto a single school bus - less than 60, out of more than 60,000 UN peacekeepers worldwide.

Our 2,300-troop-strong effort in Afghanistan, a counterterrorism mission currently under U.S. command, is a proving ground for the adoption of U.S. war-fighting doctrine and a symbolic end to Canadian/UN peacekeeping...