I meant only one of us will be speaking.
Thank you for the invitation to appear this afternoon. I am the acting senior vice-president for geographic programs. I am therefore responsible for implementation. My colleague, Christopher MacLennan, is here on behalf of the policy part of the agency.
I'll take a couple of minutes to explain how CIDA determines how and to whom aid will be channeled within a country. Respecting members' time, I will focus primarily on human rights, which are also a fundamental concern for CIDA.
We require a country-specific analysis of gender-equity, human rights, and governance for every single program we develop. We do that at implementation, at the conceptual phase, and all the way through. These analyses help us shape our development interventions. We monitor all our initiatives and we take action if and when the context or the situation changes within the country.
We expect, as do the public and the members, that CIDA programs will have a positive impact on the situation in any given country.
For example, as a result of the political crisis that began in 2001 in Zimbabwe, CIDA has adjusted development programming considerably. Canada remains engaged with the Zimbabwean people though no longer with the Government of Zimbabwe.
CIDA also assessed the country's poverty situation, the level of citizens' participation in setting national development priorities and the human rights situation. Our programming is a product of ongoing consultations with local and Canadian partners, with other donors, with UN agencies and, of course, with the government of the DRC.
We do not provide direct financial support to the government of the DRC. Our programming in the DRC is therefore channeled through trusted partners. It is focused directly on women and victims of human rights violations.
We do this in partnership with the international community, through partners such as the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund and through a respected Canadian non-governmental organization, the CISC or the Centre for International Studies and Cooperation.
CIDA is committed to fighting sexual violence against women and children in the eastern DRC and in the Great Lakes region. Canadians have every reason to be proud of the difference that Canada is making in the lives of those who suffer human rights violations.
We also support broader democratic processes, as my colleagues have mentioned, because we believe these are integral to improving the situation in human rights. Electoral support has been a priority for Canada and CIDA since the 2006 elections.
We do engage directly in dialogue with the government of the DRC and other authorities on topics such as citizen security, human rights, gender equality, and access to justice. These are all areas in which we have very clearly communicated our desire and expectation for improvement.
In closing I would say we can only hope that one day democratic and human rights conditions will have improved sufficiently in the DRC that Canada and other donors in the international community will be able to engage with the government on advancing a development agenda. We certainly are not there now.
Thank you.