Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for your time here, for your presence, and for the candour with which you describe some of the difficult circumstances in Sudan. It's a learning experience certainly for me and I appreciate you being here. Perhaps I'll pick up on our colleague, Ms. Brown's, line of questioning, because I think all of us are wondering what the Government of Canada can do, what Canadian civil society can do, what can the diaspora do, to support a greater advancement of human rights and particularly women's rights in Sudan, capacity building in public institutions—painful as it is—and some evolution towards democratic institutions.
Could you expand on your comments, which I think Ms. Brown reflected on, on the idea that partnerships might perhaps be better in some respects with state governments as opposed to the national government. I don't pretend to understand the federation or the structure in Sudan. If national institutions are weak or show massive disrespect and an inability to protect the rule of law, and the rights of women are subject to, I think you said, influence or very negative interventions from fundamentalist Islamic groups, how would that not then work its way down into lower orders of government?
Different levels of government would be ashamed to invest considerable amounts of money and energy where, from the top, is coming a series of rather negative interventions that either make it not sustainable, or very quickly it becomes money that hasn't brought about the change we were all hoping to see.