Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our guests from KAIROS. I'll just say editorially that we're very pleased to have you and your organization with us because of the great work you do not only in Sudan but around the world.
Your presentation is very powerful, and I guess my simple question is this: what do you think Canada specifically, the Canadian government, should be doing to deal with what is clearly an immense challenge over the next several months?
I think the experience of the world in these situations is that a decision to partition a country is almost inevitably followed by a dramatic movement of populations, an uptick or an increase in religious extremism and religious exclusion, and a very real threat of extensive violence. One only has to look through the history of the last 50 years to understand that this is something we know about. The world should be learning from some of the terrible experiences we've had in the postwar era, starting with the partition of India and Pakistan, which was accompanied by the deaths of tens of millions of people as a result of the partition and the movement of the populations.
So the question is what should we be doing? We have the benefit of our historical experience. We don't have to sit back and say, “Well, let's just see what happens.” We ought to be able to say, “Let's prevent a humanitarian and political catastrophe as a result of the referendum.” We all recognize the referendum is inevitable and needs to happen. Nobody's denying the need for the referendum. It's just that the consequences may be far less benign than many people seem to be asserting.
So either Mr. Davis or Mr. Lewis, since you've posed these problems to us, perhaps you could tell us what you think we should be doing.