I'll gladly take my little bit of time and thank you both for your very interesting testimony this morning.
Ms. Dawson, you mentioned at the start of your testimony the number of committees and individuals from both Parliament and business heading to Washington. I was lucky enough to take a group down. I chair the subcommittee of international human rights, and we went down with a multi-partisan group about three or four weeks ago now and had the opportunity to meet with members of Congress, members of the Senate, and members of the Tom Lantos commission, to look at the synergy that exists on issues of international human rights and where there's an alignment on issues our committees can work together on.
It was really interesting, and there was clearly a lot of common ground. We met with more or less an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on these. There was lots of alignment, issues like the Rohingya in Myanmar, Venezuela, Burundi, the Yazidis, and South Sudan, a number of areas our subcommittee has studied and continues to study.
I think there were also question marks from both Republicans and Democrats on the administration's direction moving forward. Again, there was very much alignment among the individuals we met with from parties, but in terms of where the administration might go on these issues, it didn't really seem to have been on the radar so much yet, and there was a bit of uncertainty in terms of future direction.
Of the 553 key appointments that require Senate approval, I think there have been just over 20 that have already received confirmation. Given that's in the mix, and given we're doing this kind of outreach, speak to us a little about that uncertainty and the disconnect between the parliamentarians down there and the administration and how we should approach this. Are we doing the right thing getting in early and engaging with sort of the grassroots in Congress and the Senate? How should we be playing this?