Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all of you for your presentations. They're very thought provoking for us when we're trying to move forward and really get to the heart of a matter.
I want to talk a little bit about the rights of women and girls. I think it was mentioned. I'm sure all of you have a brief comment to make with regard to this, but I don't know if you have eye signals you can give each other on who's going to take it.
With regard to the brief report from South Sudan, where we have the disturbing observation that we have brutal cases of sexual violence against women and girls and that they seem to be increasing, I know that we have international development projects and supports that are supposed to be for the empowerment of women and girls. We're supposed to be stemming these kinds of crimes against humanity in this way. I'm feeling like perhaps we're missing something that you might understand.
Are there gender empowerment initiatives? Are there programs that we should be focusing more on? Are we not deploying this enough? Are there areas where it's been effective? Why wasn't it mentioned in some of your other reports? I would just like to hear a little bit more about that.
This is an issue that, I know, part of the reason we hear more and more about it is social conscience and because we have access to more of these global details. It is an important part of our role in understanding your viewpoints on addressing that situation.