When you identify refugees for resettlement, first and foremost you must keep in mind that they're a refugee, that they're outside their country of origin. In their country of asylum, the question then becomes: are they vulnerable and at risk in that new context? Not only are they a refugee, but now are they in danger, whether it's a legal or physical protection need, a survivor of torture, a refugee woman at risk? From that we use these independent criteria to effectively look at the refugee population and identify who needs resettlement. We have seven categories—I alluded to three or four of them already—that we use to identify those needs, but in addition to that we also look at the question of priority. Is it a normal priority, in terms they need to be resettled, or is it urgent or even an emergency? That's what Canada's urgent protection program responds to: those few cases we've identified who are in imminent danger and need resettlement right now.
The point is those are independent criteria that we apply to any refugee regardless of their nationality, their gender, and such. Certainly we do have efforts like the women at risk program, where we're proactively trying to look and respond to the gender-based persecution that refugee women face, but, again, it's an independent sort of category.
One of the realities in those categories that I've referred to is that when we're operating in a country of asylum, we're a guest of these countries that are hosting us, and we have to work in co-operation with them. To be able to do resettlement, we have to then present to them the categories and criteria that we're using, instead of saying that we're going to be pursuing this particular ethnic group or that particular ethnic group, which sometimes can create problems in the country of asylum, and the politics of that.