I want to back that up by a quote from our high commissioner at the last executive committee. For the Syria situation, we get 60% of our funding. For any sub-Saharan African country, we get only 20%. That's unacceptable because the needs of an African child to go to school or, say, a Syrian refugee child in Lebanon to go to school are exactly the same. The cost of bringing the child to school may be entirely different, but actually, in a lot of instances, the costs in Africa are much less than what our operation in the Syrian situation costs.
That's a political decision. Where does the international community want to put their money, and who do they want to help? From my point of view, and I'm sure you have your own objective with this report, if one thing can be achieved with this report, it's to caution you to be careful. We are in a situation where there are 1.9 million IDPs, 1.7 million refugees. It's 2,000 people a day crossing into Uganda. It's people we can barely provide with access to potable water. Draw your own conclusions, Canadian public, on where our values as Canadians stand with not supporting the South Sudanese. I can also make the case for other African crises, while we are putting a lot of effort into another crisis.
It's not to take away from Syria. That's not my point because we were together in Lebanon, and I know, having lived there for four years, that the needs are incredible. But I think it really is an ethical question for this committee to consider. Human dignity is the same for all of us, whether we are in Winnipeg, Yei, Juba, or wherever, and the support that we give is not the same to realize the human rights of those people.