Thank you for your question.
I'm going to respond in English.
I read Madam Elsawi's testimony. I know Zaynab reasonably well and some of the women's organizations that work in Sudan, and it's quite powerful to speak with them and hear what they say.
The issues confronting women in Sudan are enormous in both the north and the south. In the north, as you know, there are issues around the legal system, which I think Madam Elsawi spoke about a little bit.
I don't want to make too much of this, but in the south there are some traditional hurdles in the way of the participation of women. Women are often kind of put at a separate table, if you like, during the peace negotiations. The women will sit over here, and then, you know, the serious discussions go on over there.
It's been 10 years since the signing of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. October 31 is the 10-year anniversary. Part of the resolution was that each signatory would develop its own national action plan for making progress on issues of women's participation in peace-building.
Canada has just released its national action plan, which I encourage you all to read. It's quite good. It sets up some guidelines, some indicators, for all of us to begin to follow not just in terms of addressing gender-based violence, but equally importantly, in terms of empowering women and women's organizations to be included at all levels of peace negotiations.
Jim made an excellent recommendation, one that comes directly from the national action plan, which is that in any peacekeeping mission, or any mission abroad, even a humanitarian mission, the member states be encouraged to include women wherever possible. We mentioned the UN police. There's been some experimentation in other parts of Africa with them that have ceded some results.
There's a lot in the action plan that I think we could be doing a lot better. Part of what KAIROS has done over the last five or six years with our partners is some human rights training, specifically with members of the Government of Southern Sudan, on the rights of women. We want to continue that work. It's long-term work. There are some excellent women's organizations that demand our support. We're doing what we can in that regard.
I won't go into all the details of the action plan, but there are a lot of really excellent ideas in this action plan, which I believe was just launched a couple of weeks ago. You can find it on the Foreign Affairs website; you all know this. There are some excellent ideas in there. They are not just about ensuring that issues of gender-based violence are addressed but are about how to empower women to be involved in addressing those issues.