Thank you very much.
I'd first like to thank all of the witnesses who have come today to give their excellent testimony. I very much appreciate not only what you're doing, but the explanations that you've provided today.
I'll start with a comment. I won't ask you to comment on it; I don't want to put you on the spot. I want to pick up on Madame Laverdière's comment, because I was going to raise it myself. Canada's development assistance has dropped to 0.24% of GDP—that comes from the OECD report that came out very recently. Last year it was 0.27%, so this is a fairly important drop. Of course, it puts us in the lower half, because the OECD average is 0.29%. Whilst yes, money has to be spent in the right programs and in an efficient manner, there's no substitute for also having money to do some of the programs that you have eloquently spoken about. That's my comment.
We have, in the course of the last few months, had the opportunity in the study of the protection of children and youth in developing countries to listen to many witnesses. I am beginning to get a sense of some of the challenges and areas that are important. Many were mentioned today—vaccination, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, and obviously early and forced marriages and female genital mutilation. These things are subjects we've been hearing about quite a bit.
For me personally, one that was new for me—and two of you brought it up—was birth registration. I was not aware of this. I guess it makes a lot of sense that much of this is not happening.
How are your organizations encouraging countries in which these births are occurring to put in place the necessary registration, or is it sometimes a difficult thing to do because of remoteness of places, that kind of thing?