Thank you, Mr. Chair, honourable members.
Thank you for the invitation to appear this afternoon. I'm pleased to be here. As the regional director general for Asia in the geographic programs branch, I am responsible for CIDA's bilateral development programming in Asia—with the exception of Afghanistan and Pakistan. My colleague, Leslie Norton, is the director general of the international humanitarian assistance programs in the multilateral and global programs branch of CIDA and is responsible there for our global humanitarian assistance programming.
Burma's development challenges are significant. According to the 2011 UN Human Development Report, Burma ranked 149th out of 187 countries on a composite measure of income per capita, life expectancy and education levels. In the border regions where fighting continues between the national army and armed non-state ethnic groups, there is evidence that the depth of poverty is considerably greater than the national average for Burma. In addition to impeding long-term social and economic development in the affected regions, these long-standing conflicts have resulted in widespread displacement within Burma and migration across borders.
From 1950 to 1988, Canada provided over $100 million in official development assistance to Burma. Assistance was directed toward areas such as agriculture, forestry, health, and industrial development, with the occasional provision of food aid.
Following the Burmese army's massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988, Canada suspended bilateral development assistance to Burma. In 2007, Canadian sanctions were strengthened through the special economic measures (Burma) regulations. Under these sanctions, the provision of development assistance other than humanitarian assistance was only possible through a special permit from the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
While the easing of sanctions removes this constraint to Canada providing long-term bilateral development assistance in Burma, at the present time Canada does not have a bilateral development program inside Burma, nor do we provide any official development assistance directly to the Government of Burma.
Under Canadian sanctions, provision of humanitarian assistance in support of crisis-affected people within Burma was permitted. As elsewhere in the world, CIDA provides humanitarian assistance on the basis of need and in response to appeals issued by experienced humanitarian organizations in the UN system, the Red Cross movement, and Canadian NGOs.
In Burma, CIDA has provided humanitarian assistance to help people affected by natural disasters, conflict, and statelessness. Between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2011, CIDA's humanitarian assistance in Burma totalled approximately $29 million. Twenty-five million of this was provided in response to Cyclone Nargis, which struck southern Burma in May 2008, killing 140,000 people and severely affecting 2.4 million others. That sum includes $11.6 million provided by the Government of Canada through a fund set up to match Canadians' charitable contributions in response to the disaster.
CIDA support helped humanitarian partners achieve important results, including the provision of life-saving food assistance to some one million people, emergency shelter material to over 350,000 families, and essential household and hygiene items to over 800,000 people.
In fiscal years 2011 and 2012, CIDA's humanitarian assistance to Burma included $3.5 million to the United Nations World Food Program. Results of this included, in 2011, in northern Rakhine State, provision by WFP of a monthly food basket during the six-month lean season to 70,000 particularly vulnerable households, as well as supporting the regular school attendance of 113,000 students through the provision of a monthly rice ration.
Since 1988, CIDA has also provided assistance to displaced Burmese migrants and refugees through a border area programming approach. The current phase of this programming, which runs until 2015, is the Burma border assistance program, implemented by the Canadian NGO Inter Pares with a five-year budget from CIDA of $15.9 million.
This initiative delivers food, fuel, and shelter to approximately 145,000 refugees in camps in Thailand, as well as health care services for 500,000 displaced Burmese living in border areas. I would note that we have some folks from Inter Pares in the room with us today.
Under this program, with CIDA support, over one million cases of malaria, acute respiratory infections, TB, and severe malnutrition have been treated. This same initiative is helping to improve the capacity of over 50 civil society organizations to access, document, and disseminate information on human rights, including women's rights, and on environmental sustainability.
My colleague Leslie Norton and I are pleased to join our colleagues from Foreign Affairs in answering your questions.
Merci.