Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Hillsborough.
I am very pleased and proud this evening to participate in this debate and obviously to support the government's position to send peacekeepers to Ethiopia.
As the minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency, I have been dealing with this area for some time, both with respect to the disastrous effects that the famine has had, which is a natural disaster as a result of drought in this region both in Eritrea as well as in Ethiopia, compounded with the war that exists between these two countries.
People have suffered on both sides. In Eritrea there are about one million people who have been displaced within the country as well as in Ethiopia. The war has caused a tremendous amount of hardship which was compounded by the famine. Safety in the area to provide assistance has been very difficult.
We are very thankful and very proud that my department, together with other departments in the Government of Canada and other partners, have managed to finally negotiate a peace agreement in this area. I congratulate the two countries and hope that this of course will hold. That is why I support wholeheartedly Canada's participation.
Canadian peacekeepers are, from what I saw when I travelled to Kosovo, a group of soldiers who are not only welcome but who become part of the community. In Kosovo they have become loved partners of the children of Kosovo. They have helped to rebuild the schools as well as doing their jobs as peacekeepers and keeping the young people away from mines.
CIDA has already announced $200,000 to the UN mine co-ordination centre, $100,000 for Eritrea and the other $100,000 for Ethiopia. Unfortunately both sides have laid an untold number of land mines in the area and this has to be addressed very quickly.
Last month Canada made an important investment in peace in a broader sense. I am referring, of course, to the International Conference on War-Affected Children which was held in Winnipeg. Children and women are very much the people who pay the highest price in these circumstances. The conference was attended by Eritrean ministers and I urged them to sign and ratify the land mines treaty.
I am pleased to note that Ethiopia has signed the treaty and we still look forward to its early ratification. First and foremost, however, we look forward to both governments taking a leadership role in removing the mines laid during the conflict, which are major threats to Ethiopian and Eritrean people, especially children.
Both countries have a responsibility to utilize the strength of their soldiers who are no longer involved in hostilities and hopefully will continue to not be involved in hostilities but who will direct their energies toward the removal of the land mines with the assistance of the UN mine action committee which can certainly train, supervise and assist together with Canadian assistance.
According to the UN human development index, these two countries rank among the 15 poorest countries in the world. Already this year, in order to assist with the disasters that have occurred in that country, natural disasters, famine, as well as having the situation compounded by the war, Canada has provided $25 million in assistance to meet the needs of the drought in war affected populations in the Horn of Africa. Most of that was provided to both Eritrea and Ethiopia.
During the last conference on war affected children, I made a commitment that from now on when peacekeepers go into an area we will also finance a child protection program that will be part of the peacekeeping unit. It is very important to understand that when peacekeepers move into an area there are people in various camps to separate the children and women. We want to be able to assist and to protect children from any situations that might arise and ensure that they are assisted with rehabilitation, education and nutrition. Most children in this situation have suffered tremendously from malnutrition, from fear and, quite often, are not just physical abused, but as a result of war are injured in many different ways.
In addition to that, I have asked my department to be very much involved. One of my advisers in this area is General Dallaire who will be working with me to define and shape some of the programs that we will be delivering to this region.
As members know, General Dallaire is someone who has a great deal of expertise in the field with respect to peacekeeping. He also has a great deal of understanding of what happens to children and people when they are affected by war and when they have gone through a very long period of hostilities. He knows about the kind of assistance that is required to assist people to rebuild their lives slowly and be able to function again.
My department and CIDA will be looking to working very closely with the peacekeepers in terms of protecting the children, providing the medical health care they require, the food aid, the nutrition, the education, the rehabilitation and possibly assistance in the area of shelter.
It is very critical to understand that we must begin to push very hard for the elimination of land mines.
Most of the land has not been tilled as a result of the war and the drought. The land that could be tilled and could be planted is full of land mines. If we do not de-mine as quickly as we can and with the assistance of the two military groups that were involved in laying many of these land mines, crops will not be planted. That means yet another season of crops will be missed, which will exacerbate the famine and the food shortage in the region as they exist today.
I am very proud to say that the staff at CIDA and our partners, the NGOs that we worked with, have been in the field for a very long time to assist with the famine as much as they could and with some of the displaced people in the camps. They will now be in a position to go in with our peacekeepers and make a much bigger difference.
I am proud today to support the Minister of National Defence and the Government of Canada with the initiative. I believe in it very strongly, having seen what happens to people when I visited some of the areas of conflict in Africa. I believe that Canada should be there. CIDA will be there to assist side by side in ensuring that people can get back to some normalcy of life.