Foreign Affairs committee  In India, earlier in 2014, the Government of India came up with a very good, comprehensive, integrated adolescent health and development policy. The problem in India is that the formulation takes place at the federal level, whereas implementation takes place at the state level, and there lies the major gap between policy formulation and its implementation, simply because this is the state's subject.

Foreign Affairs committee  What we are using that funding for is to purchase bicycles for girls to go to school. Only a tenth of the villages have schools up to secondary education. If a girl has to continue her education, she has to go to a neighbouring village to be able to do so. Bicycles increase their mobility.

Foreign Affairs committee  We don't have experience working in conflict zones and with communities that are suffering from that, but sexual abuse is happening in other communities as well. The way one deals with that kind of issue really is, as I said, to make the men understand that it is to their advantage, it is to their benefit, to bring this down.

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, on the first question, I think we first need to address why we need to work at the grassroots level. All the innovations we're talking about for delaying marriage, for preventing child marriage, and for protecting married adolescent girls are taking place in the NGO sector.

Foreign Affairs committee  Innovations?

Foreign Affairs committee  I think that kind of identification and evaluation has already been done. It's really a matter of being able to seek out where these innovations exist and scale them up.

Foreign Affairs committee  There are two answers to your question, sir. One is that I think all of these years we have been addressing issues related to women and girls, but we've really never considered boys and men. We've never believed that they also had reproductive and sexual health problems that needed to be addressed.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm from India. India is a large country. In India, there are currently 113 million adolescent girls. We expect 45%—this is the national average—to get married before 18 years of age, which amounts to 51 million girls. Every year, roughly 8 million to 10 million are getting married and becoming mothers.