We'll call this meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, meeting number 22, Thursday, October 19.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we gather here to receive a briefing on the crisis in Darfur. In today's news we have reports that violence in Darfur is spreading again. There have been 100 people killed and 3,000 displaced in 10 villages, according to an article this morning. Sudanese Janjaweed militia and Chadian rebels have attacked at least 10 villages in southeast Chad in the past fortnight, killing more than 100 people and displacing more than 3,000 local and UN officials. That's the comment they gave.
The attacks are a spillover of violence from Sudan's western Darfur region, where violence has increased. As the seasonal river courses have dried up after the annual rains, these routes now become passable for rebel jeeps and others as they go throughout the country.
The estimates of death in the Darfur region by some have topped 200,000. Richard Gwyn, the well-known Canadian political affairs writer, points out in an article today that the government in Khartoum has successfully stared down the UN by declaring that it would refuse to accept UN peacekeepers. A lot of things keep going on. The killing goes on and on. Gwyn notes that Sudan's defiance is especially telling. He writes that it's exactly the kind of weak state where the new doctrine of responsibility to protect, which Canada played a lead role in developing, ought to be applied. Gwyn maintains that the outside world and the UN have looked the other way when it comes to Darfur.
For today's briefings on the crisis in Darfur we are very pleased to have with us, from the Canadian International Development Agency, Diane Jacovella, the director general, east, the Horn and southern Africa division; Leslie Norton, acting director general, humanitarian assistance, peace and security, multilateral programs branch; and, Laurent Charette, director of the Malawi program.
Also from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade we have Janet Graham, director of the Sudan task force; and, Wendy Gilmour, director of the peacekeeping and peace operations group.
We thank you for coming today to appear before us to provide to this foreign affairs and international development committee the latest facts and figures concerning the situation or the crisis in Darfur. This committee will, even though it is a special meeting, wait to hear your presentations.
I'm uncertain as to how many of the five will present. Will all of you be giving a presentation, or how many will be?
Okay, there are two presentations. Usually we try to keep it within a ten-minute testimonial, and then we'll proceed into the first round of questioning, which gives every party seven minutes in the first round and five minutes in following rounds.
We're going to try to leave a little bit of time at the end of the meeting for committee business dealing specifically with a motion that has been on the books and that we talked about yesterday. My intentions for the committee are that we entertain a motion--it has to be by unanimous consent--as to whether or not we will accept that committee business dealing with Madam McDonough.
In the meantime, thank you for coming. We look forward to your testimonial.