I'm of the belief that there is always room for improvement in everything we do. Certainly I would say that Canada's visibility, at least in the areas where we are working, is not that high when it comes to protection. The exception I would put on that would be Syria, because certainly in the refugee camps in Jordan we've had a very high visibility. You could also argue that with Haiti we had a much higher visibility.
But when it comes to...keeping in mind that most of our programming is in Africa—in eastern Congo, South Sudan, Darfur, northern Uganda, and elsewhere. Canada's involvement in those contexts—South Sudan would be the exception, because we have had a much more prominent role there when it comes to these issues—has been, in some of these other places, not as much.
I think there has been a shift: the high-visibility activities we are engaged in tend to focus, as I've said, on these bigger announcements of the shorter-term interventions in response to a crisis or a natural disaster. Alternatively, those big announcements also tend to go to, say, UN pooled funds, which has been mentioned already. The opportunity for Canada to be visible within that is understandably diminished, because it's not seen that there is a very prominent role for Canadians, either diplomatically or at least within the humanitarian movement. There's not a prominent role we are taking on that is visible, being reported on, and shaping or influencing policy at that level. That's just the context in which we are working. Within that there are exceptions: Afghanistan, South Sudan, and a few others.
When you look at what's happened in Europe, for example, with the greater alignment of the AIDS strategy within DFID, and the Scandinavian countries that have committed to achieving or are already achieving or exceeding the 0.7%, we have a lot of catching up to do. I think there is great room for us to define ourselves on an international level as being a country deeply invested in human rights, child protection, and the protection of women and the advancement of girls globally. But it is incumbent upon all of us to seize that platform; to think about our aid in a more concerted, progressive, longer-term way to target those high-risk countries; and to stop chasing our tails with crisis announcement, crisis announcement—to actually be meaningfully invested over the long term.
So we're doing some good stuff, but we can do more.