Thank you very much.
Let me say this. The way we work the fund is one country at a time, understanding the context within the country itself and also understanding communities within countries, because not every country is homogeneous and indeed, Canada is not. To an extent, being able to understand what the levers are within a community, particularly in terms of family planning is what enables us to penetrate and to offer services. I can tell you that we've scored very significant successes in many parts of the world just by being able to get down to communities and understanding and working with communities.
When you look at a country like Indonesia, it's the largest Muslim community in the world. It has a 50% to 60% contraceptive rate. That's good. We need to do better, but we've done well there. When you look at countries like Tunisia and Algeria, we've done well, because they're Muslims, but they have accepted it. We had success in Egypt until the fundamentalists came, but we also made progress.
I don't think it's a question of religion or whatever. I think it's our understanding of it and our ability to sit and work with people.
One of the things that I believe is also important and which the last questioner asked was on political support, political will, and leadership. Once you have the political will and leadership, things move better than you expect.
I was talking to one diplomat from Bangladesh last week. Bangladesh is one of the poor countries in the world. It has reduced the number of children per woman from 6.2 to 2.5—family planning—and it's a Muslim country, a totally Muslim country. Bangladesh has about four million women in the workforce now, so education is there. Things are moving.
I think it's just our ability to understand the context and also work with systems on the ground, government being in the lead. I think we can make a difference.
In my country, and I say this, there is a difference. If you look outside of Nigeria, progress is being made. If you look at some parts of Niger, progress is being made. About two or three weeks ago, we had a teleconference with religious leaders from northern Nigeria. They said that they were prepared to work with us on family planning. I think it is an understanding.
One of the things that I think is there that we still have to work with and that I totally see is an ability to work with young people, because even parents in modern economies don't like to talk to their children about contraception. In a sense that's the basis we need to work with, but work with them we have to, because when you look at the demographic of those who die from unsafe abortions, 40% to 50% of them are young people who are not married. We need to save them from themselves and we need to also reach them with services.