It's my pleasure to do so.
You mentioned to us that CARE has been involved for 50 years, or perhaps more, in Afghanistan. I wonder if you could give us a short history of where women were in terms of their rights and their political influence pre-Taliban, what happened with the Taliban, and what has happened since the Taliban. Is there any improvement?
I was with this committee in Afghanistan in June. One of the things we were told, which was very encouraging to me, was that approximately 28% of the MPs in the Afghan parliament are women. That's actually a higher percentage than here in Canada. And those women face enormous threats to their personal safety in doing those jobs everyday.
Perhaps you could comment on all of that.