Thank you very much for those questions.
Peace-building reflects the nature of Afghan society. I think it is one of the most communal and tribal societies in the world, and peace-building works at that level. It works with families and communities.
I think it's clear from the experience we have working with peace-building organizations that they have a very significant effect, a very significant impact, on the communities where they work, and I think it's also important to recognize that sometimes the frictions and disputes that exist at a local level feed into the wider conflict and are sometimes exploited by those who are engaged in the conflict--criminal groups and militant groups--to further their own ends, but of course it has its own benefit, which is bringing greater peace to communities.
As you rightly pointed out, we are calling for a national strategy, because although around a dozen or more organizations engaged in peace-building work endorsed our report, they have limited resources and of course affect only a limited number of communities. The people who work in these organizations ask me why this did not happen five years ago, why there was not a comprehensive plan to work at a local level. They understand the nature of Afghan society and how important it is to have peace at that level.
We are calling for a national strategy and we hope and believe that the Canadian government could give strong support to that. Of course there'll need to be some financial support; if CIDA contributed, that would lead the way and encourage other donors to do likewise. I think there is real potential here for a very positive program that would bring very real benefits to communities who are, in some cases, suffering from significant levels of insecurity and violence.
That's what I would say about the peace-building program.
On transparency, some donors are better than others, but what we want to see is comprehensive transparency. Indeed, the Afghanistan Compact calls on donors and commits them to be transparent with all aid information. They are yet to live up to that commitment; we believe a commission tasked with monitoring aid could encourage them to do so and could ensure that such information is collated, analyzed, and assessed, and then there could be indicators of how well donors are doing. If we can't clearly identify the bad practices, we won't be able to put them right.
I think it's in everybody's interest to have a commission of this kind to assess what's going wrong and how we can improve the delivery of aid.