Thank you very much, Chair.
Thanks to you all for your testimony and your advice, particularly in the area of the next incarnation of C-NAP. I think some of the advice was very well-grounded and bears consideration by the government going forward.
Given that the United Nations is the agency most often responsible for security on the ground in conflict, post-conflict, and peacekeeping situations, I'm sure you were as troubled as I was when I read an article last month in The New York Times by a long-time official in this area and in post-disaster areas like Haiti. He gave a very long list of reasons why he had decided, after all these years, to resign from the organization. One of the most telling examples had to do with the peacekeeping force delegated to the Central African Republic. Against the advice of many groups, grassroots organizations on the ground, the soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo were sent in. Since then, for almost two years, they proceeded to systematically abuse and rape the very women that the United Nations had sent them there to protect. One of those peacekeeping groups has been removed in the last couple of months, but the other is still there.
I'm wondering whether you would attribute this to systemic dysfunction within United Nations' peacekeeping in some parts of the world. This is not a new story, certainly, in Africa. Is this cynical politics, or Is it the result of male decision-making, disregarding the probable reality on the ground? Or is it all of the above?
The question is to all three of you.