Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'll be sharing my time with my colleague.
Mr. Deng, I believe one of the most basic elements of a civil society is respect for its people, particularly respect for its women and children. We saw earlier in another meeting some appalling statistics of some 1,100 women and girls who are raped every month. Over the period of 10 to 12 years, that could well be up to 1.5 million.
Being former military myself, and understanding that it's an elected government there now and that some of these rapes are being conducted even by their own militia, their own policing, and given that there is a United Nations force in there of 20,000 people, I find it unbelievable that the situation is still continuing. And it's perhaps one of the reasons our good General Leslie either didn't see fit to take on the duty or he had other things he had to do.
I would like to know your opinion on why progress has not been made on that issue. I would think that it's a failure of all militaries everywhere. It's an issue that perhaps...and maybe it would be interesting to know your viewpoint on whether any punishments are being meted for that crime, whether the bar of deterrence is too low on it, or whether it's a cultural acceptance within the regions.