There are about 51 countries in the world now that have national action plans. Those include countries that are directly experiencing conflict and countries like Canada that perceive this from the perspective of primarily a foreign policy development and security assistance point of view.
Our organization has identified criteria that we call “criteria for a high-impact national action plan”. We've always said there are four things that go into having a high-impact national action plan: one is genuine political will; two is actually ensuring that the plan was a result of consultation, including with civil society; three is a strong monitoring and evaluation framework; and four is resourcing.
We'd say that right now in the world there is one, possibly two, plans that meet all those criteria and are what we'd consider high impact. Probably about a third of them, about a quarter of them, are close to being high impact; and there are several, as I mentioned in my presentation, that really were not worth the paper they're written on. They're done for show demonstrate that countries are taking action, primarily for and funded by an international audience, and have very little political will at home.
We're often cautious about saying this country's model is ideal and that country's model is not. A lot of things are to be learned from different countries, and I've spoken a fair amount with colleagues here in civil society in Canada who have also participated in exchanges and sessions with governments in civil society around the world, looking at different models that do work.
There is a range of models. For example, the last version of the Netherlands map had 56 civil society organizations sign on to the national action plan and commit to holding themselves accountable for taking certain steps. You heard about Norway's national action plan a couple of days ago that has an implementation strategy associated with it. There are ranges of different national action plans, each of which, I would say, has at least something that Canada can draw from in terms of lessons and models, but there isn't one model that I would hold out.
That said, there are now 51 countries with national action plans. Most of them have been created in the last three to four years, so we're all learning these lessons as we go. Canada has an opportunity to create something tailored, recognizing that national action plans aren't entirely different from every other national government strategy that you create, whereas, as you all know, you want accountability measures, political will, resourcing, and you want some type of authentic collaboration to create it.
I hope that at least partly answers your question.