First of all, I would just endorse everything that David said. I think the evidence for that is growing.
The other disturbing thing is that, where we thought we'd made progress, things are going backwards, like with early forced marriage, for example. Girls are being married off at very young ages. It's a source of income in the Rohingya culture. When there's no other money and no other work, it just feeds into the system.
There have been significant increases in gender-based violence. I think the point you're making about the role that women and young people can and must play in peacebuilding is very significant.
For the last year, Canada has been the chair of the peacebuilding commission at the UN. We've made the inclusion of women a theme of our work. In all the work we've done around the world and in our hearings that we've held at the UN, we're always focusing on this question of how we can make sure that women are present and that women are part of the solution. We've been doing this even in terms of the recent discussions in Afghanistan.
It's tough. It's a challenge because there's still a lot of resistance from many sources of patriarchy that say that's not the way they do things. The reality is that women are demanding a place at the table and are demanding to be involved. We see it in the effective leadership of the camp in Cox's Bazar, as well as in the larger camp in Sittwe. They are women. They are playing such a critical role. They are tired of being marginalized.
We have a significant issue with respect to education, as it relates particularly to women. The very small efforts and progress we were able to make in education had the most significant impact on women and girls because it finally allowed them to get access to education, which they never had. In northern Rakhine, most young Rohingya and other groups do not have access to education, particularly women. It's often just said there that there's no education after the age of 10 or after the age of 12. This is a really big issue.
I think it's where the logic of the feminist foreign assistance program and the feminist foreign policy becomes overwhelming. It's not an ideological statement. It's just the reality that this is where the major inequities lie right now. If we can drive that agenda, then we can do better on a number of other fronts as well.