Thank you very much for the question.
We see a number of causes of displacement. Just bringing it back to who the political leader of the day is, authoritarian or not, that is one cause, but it's one cause among many. For us, it's a kind of triangle. It's poverty, it's stability around the democratic process and it's climate-induced catastrophes. This is what we're seeing, and now conflict is piling on top of that.
We can't reduce it to one cause, but we know that countries that have political stability, economic stability, social safety nets, employment opportunities and a sense of security create the conditions for people to stay put. This is why people stay home and they don't flee. Not all of that is caused by political leaders of the day, but a democratic society where people have a say in how decisions are made and how government funds are spent, in particular on public services, makes a huge difference.
Therefore, investing in public services is something that we advocate for. It's obviously much easier to do in a democratic regime, but I wouldn't say that everything has to do with politics. Today, climate-induced disasters can hit any country. We are being hit in Canada. We see the forest fires, the debilitating smoke and the flooding in Quebec, where I live. We have a democracy, and we're still being hit by climate crises that will eventually cause displacement in our own country.
As we look at the causes of the migration crisis, we need to understand they're complex, but the only way to answer them is to invest in sustainable development. That means, in some contexts, climate-smart agriculture. In another context, it's building codes that are resilient to natural disasters, and, in others, it's youth vocational training where you have a huge youth population and not enough employment opportunities. In every context, it's investing in gender equality. We know that countries that have more gender equality are also more stable and are less likely to contribute to global displacement crises.
It's a complicated answer, but it's a complicated problem. If we want to be addressing it, we need to be looking at that interplay between democratic development, sustainable development, humanitarian aid—when necessary—and peacebuilding.
One last thing on peacebuilding is that we hear so few women's voices in peacebuilding efforts. If women are not involved in those processes, they're less likely to hold in the long run and, again, that will contribute to fuelling this cycle of crisis, war and displacement.