Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you also to the honourable member for the question.
I have a very similar answer to Mr. Aylieff's. Again, I say a huge thank you to the Canadian government for the $4.5 million Canadian that funded the ICRC's programming in Afghanistan during 2021. We equally seek to spend that ourselves directly, through the different programs we have in Afghanistan, while trying to ensure that all of that money gets directly to those for whom it is intended.
In the wake of the Taliban takeover, we have insisted to them and the authorities that we will continue to insist on our independence and on being compliant with all of the standard ways in which we generally tend to operate as a neutral, impartial, independent humanitarian organization.
Talking in particular about the hospital support project and program that I referenced previously, we actually signed an MOU with the Taliban, with the new ministry of health authorities, let's say, with the understanding that we would not be channelling any of our financing through the ministry itself but would be paying directly the money in salaries, for example, to the doctors, cleaners and health staff in all of these different hospitals ourselves, to each individual staff member. We have our own International Committee of the Red Cross monitoring mechanisms but we have also engaged a German-Dutch third party monitoring company that is also carrying out monitoring for us independently to ensure that the funding that we put through that program is delivered directly to the intended recipients. We are very aware of the need to act in compliance with the various legal parameters and we take with great seriousness the need to ensure that we are in compliance with those.
Thank you.