- Group Seven consists of countries with unique characteristics: Iceland, Maldives and Malta.
Group Seven was created because these three last countries have unique characteristics that do not fit in any of the previous groups. The reasons why these countries do not contribute troops is because they have very strong and defined political agendas about their priorities, in which becoming a regional power, benefiting from UN peacekeeping salaries, and bilateral agreements are not as important as their own agendas.
In the case of Iceland, it does not have defence forces. But Iceland is part of NATO without participating with troops, and not only that, they have successfully created a civilian force to participate in peace operations. In 2001 the government founded the Icelandic Crisis Response Unit (ICRU) a team of police officers, nurses, doctors and engineers which could be deployed to potential trouble spots around the world as a civilian peacekeeping mission at short notice (EIU 2006t, 11). All members of the Icelandic staff are civilians (NATO/KFOR 2003, par. 1).
The Maldives is a small island state that has defence forces, and Maldives could be the first country to disappear as a result of the climate change affecting the rise of oceans. Because “the Maldives is made up of a chain of nearly 1,200 islands, most of them uninhabited, which lie off the Indian sub-continent and are vulnerable to a rise in sea levels associated with global warming” (BBC 2006ah, par. 1). As a result, the Maldives’ international agenda is to advocate for policies to control climate changes.
In the case of Malta, it is the only EU member that is not a NATO member. Thus, the main reason why Malta does not contribute troops relies on “its internal political environment stressing its military neutrality as enshrined in Malta’s constitution” (EIU 2006ac, 5). But this is not the only factor that makes Malta unique. Following a Malta Labor Party (MLP) election victory in 1996, the MLP government discontinued participation in the NATO-sponsored PfP framework (Ibid.). As a result of the discontinuation, in 2005 Malta remains the only non-participating European country, turning Malta into a unique country for its policy towards military affairs (Ibid.).
