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Notably absent as Donald Trump launched his vaunted “Board of Peace” on Thursday morning in Switzerland was Mark Carney.
The Canadian prime minister had already left Davos, site of the World Economic Forum annual meetings, where the U.S. president held a celebratory signing ceremony for his new global endeavour.
Canada was one of the roughly five dozen nations invited as a founding member late last week and while Carney said over the weekend that he’d accepted a seat “in principle,” after his much-talked-about WEF speech on Tuesday, he explained that Canada’s involvement is dependent on the “full flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
“We are still not where we need to be, so that needs to come onside,” Carney said.
National Post has contacted the Prime Minister’s Office for further comment after the signing.
There’s been a lot said about the Board of Peace this week. Here’s what to know:
What is the Trump’s Board of Peace?
The board was first pitched in September as part of phase two of Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, with its primary goal to oversee the region’s governance, reconstruction and economic recovery after the Israel-Hamas war.
But a draft of the board’s founding charter, viewed by several media outlets, including The Times of Israel , doesn’t mention Gaza once and expands the group’s role well beyond the Middle East enclave’s borders.
“The Board of Peace is an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict,” it reads.
The United Nations’ Security Council initially supported the original mandate, but after its proposed role was expanded to have global reach, a spokesperson reiterated that it had only granted the entity authority for its Gaza efforts, as reported by Bloomberg .
The draft also calls on member nations to sit for three years or contribute US$1 billion for permanent membership. It also grants the chairman — a position Trump has claimed indefinitely — nearly immutable decision-making power.
“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever in conjunction with the United Nations. You know, I’ve always said the United Nations has got tremendous potential,” Trump said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a member of the founding executive board, called it a “board of action,” and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “the charter is now in full force, and the board of peace is now an official international organization.”
Who has accepted invitations to Trump’s Board of Peace?
As of Thursday, about two dozen invited nations have agreed to join, some of whom were on stage with Trump on Thursday morning.
Among them were Argentine President Javier Milei and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, both long-time fans and supporters of the U.S. president. Also in Davos were Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, whose nations were at odds until a Trump-brokered peace deal last August.
Other nations to sit on the board include Bahrain, Morocco, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Watar, Kosovo, Paraguay, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
#Statement | The Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, and the UAE welcome the invitation extended to their leaders by the President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, to join the Board of Peace. pic.twitter.com/z0w2X0xdDJ
— Foreign Ministry 🇸🇦 (@KSAmofaEN) January 21, 2026
Trump called the modest assembly of leaders and other representatives “the biggest, most powerful people in the world” and said “every one of them is a friend.”
“A couple I like, a couple I don’t like,” he joked. “No. I like, actually, this group. I like every single one of them. Can you believe it? Usually I have about two or three that I can’t stand.”
Israel, too, accepted an invitation, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not present in Davos and had previously expressed concern about the inclusion of officials from Qatar and Turkey on a sub-committee tasked with Gaza’s administration.
Also invited are Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, sometimes referred to as “Europe’s last dictator,” and, more jarring to other invitees, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin, according to The Associated Press , said Russia is still consulting with “strategic partners” before deciding to commit. As reported by Bloomberg , he also said Russia could contribute $1 billion from frozen U.S.-based assets towards the board, a topic he expects to discuss with executive board members, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, during their Thursday meeting in Moscow.
Other executive members include former United Kingdom prime minister Tony Blair, Apollo Global Management co-founder Marc Rowan, World Bank Group president Ajay Banga and White House advisers Robert Gabriel and Marc Rowan.
Who has turned down invitations to Trump’s Board of Peace and who’s on the fence?
As of Thursday, a handful of major U.S. allies and G7 nations have explicitly said they will not enlist in Trump’s initiative at this time — they include Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Slovenia and France.
While Denmark has its own issues with the Trump administration’s now-shelved plans to acquire Greenland, all those nations, along with France, have declined the invitation over Gaza’s absence and concerns the board would undermine the UN.
“It was not corresponding on the one hand with the pure Gaza mandate, which is not even mentioned, and on the other hand, there are elements of this charter which are contrary to the United Nations charter,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said Thursday, per The Times of Israel.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also offered a seat, but has said he cannot envision being part of the same organization as Putin and Lukashenko.
“Russia is our enemy. Belarus is their ally,” he told reporters in Davos. “It is very difficult for me to imagine how we and Russia can be together in this or that council.”
He added that countries joining the board could help monitor a future ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, which he said was part of a previously discussed security plan and would only apply after the war ends.
The U.K. expressed similar concerns about Russia and Gaza and is also holding off.
“We won’t be one of the signatories today because this is a legal treaty that raises much broader issues,” Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC on Thursday.
“And we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something that’s talking about peace when we’ve still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be commitment to peace in Ukraine.”
Elsewhere, among invited European nations, officials in the Netherlands said it had “not taken a position yet ,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declined over potential conflicts with her country’s constitution and Belgium, despite being initially labelled by the White House as a backer, denied signing the charter in Davos, according to Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Prevot on X.
Invitee and German Chancellor Frederic Merz was also absent Thursday and German media later reported on an internal government document that said joining the board in its present form is impossible. According to Global Times , Germany is committed to international order through the UN Charter and the U.S. proposal was seen as a “counter-draft” to that.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said President Pedro Sanchez, who was invited but absent from Thursday’s official event, will be the one to announce the country’s participation . He said Spain wants to be part of a “common EU position” on the plan, one that respects international law and multilateralism.
A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, said the nation, like Germany, will remain “committed to safeguarding the international system with the UN at its core.”
The European Union was also invited and its president, Ursula von der Leyen, is due to decide how to respond to her invitation after an urgent meeting of EU leaders on Thursday, according to Politico .
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