Foreign Affairs committee  We were here on January 27 to discuss Syria and Iraq. I assume that is the meeting you are referring to. I can tell you that, since then, no additional humanitarian funding has been allocated to that end.

Foreign Affairs committee  I think we can clearly define the Syria crisis and Iraq crisis both together as protection crises. They're crises that affect women and children, and men and boys. We have many protection challenges and one of them primarily is access to many of the very vulnerable people. What w

Foreign Affairs committee  I can't give you those numbers right now. What I will come back to this committee with is the number of children who are in both informal and formal school settings. In this context the majority of children will be in the informal type settings of schooling because the schools ha

Foreign Affairs committee  Recently, in 2015, I think you know that Minister Paradis announced $50 million in additional assistance in response to the Syrian crisis. Of that, $25 million was for inside Syria and $25 million was for the neighbouring countries. Within that funding there were allocations for

Foreign Affairs committee  In a crisis, we provide humanitarian assistance first. When the conflict ends, we focus on rebuilding and long-term development. We are not there yet, but when the time comes, we will enter discussions with the World Bank and the UNDP. They play a role in development. We are wor

Foreign Affairs committee  Currently 40% of the internally displaced in Iraq are residing in the KRG region. That's actually down from 47% later last year. However, it's still a remarkable number of people who are either residing with host communities or living in churches, mosques, and unfinished building

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, they were facilitating that. Apart from the 40% of the internally displaced people who are residing in this region, there are also over 200,000 refugees from Syria, and the government continues to be very generous and open to receiving these people who require assistance.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for your many questions in your one big question. Perhaps I'll just start by saying that currently there's an estimated 5.2 million people requiring assistance in Iraq itself, of which 1.5 million people are considered out of reach. So they're in the hard to r

Foreign Affairs committee  With all due respect, I think that goes beyond the mandate of what we're here to speak to, and I would kindly suggest that our CIC colleagues be invited to respond to that.

Foreign Affairs committee  As you know, we respond to humanitarian crises based on need. The current UN appeal is for the totality of 2014-15, so our funds will be at work throughout the entire calendar year of 2015. It looks as though we may be heading towards a protracted crisis in Iraq, and we will ev

Foreign Affairs committee  Just to confirm, the announcement was for $40 million for Iraqis affected by the conflict. Indeed, $10 million was for WFP; $9 million was UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. That's correct. The $8 million for UNICEF was a previous announcement, back in October. All of

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Maybe I can kick off with an answer. In the immediate aftermath of any humanitarian crisis, there is a robust vulnerability assessment done by our partners. If these children and women were considered vulnerable, then they would absolutely have had access to humanitarian assistan

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Could I add a few things? I was quite taken with your question about what we can learn and how we can prepare for the future. In fact, the future is here today. Currently, through our humanitarian assistance programming, we support a range of efforts around the world that work

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  If I could just add—

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you very much. I just wanted to add that on the question of returns following the genocide, the focus of the humanitarian and development programs in Rwanda by the Government of Canada was really on repatriation and reconstruction back in Rwanda and on creating the conditi