You'd think after seven years of learning that we would know how to work these things.
Thank you for the question. The challenges are extraordinary, and we've been over that. One of the things that I think is really important is.... We sometimes lose the human stories behind some of these cases, when we talk about the numbers and the process. The treatment of women and girls by the Taliban is horrific.
I'll give you an honourable mention here, Ms. Damoff, for your work on the status of women committee during our first two and a half years here together. You've been a stalwart champion for women and girls since the moment that we've ever met.
There's one particular instance that has stuck with me that I just can't shake. There was a young 10-year old girl who was on her way, trying to come to Canada, and who had already been through a huge part of the process. She was killed at a checkpoint by the Taliban. We don't know with certainty whether that particular person was targeted. This is the same group who is now even removing Canadian citizens from an airplane because they were travelling alone.
If there's one comfort I take from our presence in Afghanistan, it's that there's an entire generation of girls who benefited from an education and whose lives will hopefully be changed.
Some of the things that we're doing in particular on this mission to help women and girls.... I'm sorry. I'm distracted in my own mind over that case. If you look at the eligibility criteria for the humanitarian stream, there's a huge focus on supporting those who are vulnerable because they're women. Sometimes it's just the fact that they were women leaders. Sometimes it's the fact that they were women leaders who were changing the society in a way that wasn't convenient for Taliban operatives. It's no coincidence that we were targeting women parliamentarians and judges. It's not because we like parliamentarians and judges as much as we might. It's because they were adopting laws that were promoting gender equality, or as judges, putting people in jail who violated principles that we believe in.
We also work with organizations that have an expertise in identifying people based on either vulnerability or the criteria we set out, including somebody's work as a human rights defender. Canada was the first country in the world to establish such a stream, and it's something we collectively can be proud of by trying to work with groups on the ground who can identify people on the basis of their vulnerability, including people who are vulnerable because they're women.
I think it's a strength of this particular program, but I'll rest a lot easier when I see that we've achieved our goal to get more of those women here to Canada.