Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the committee for inviting me here.

I'm going to speak from personal experience for a few reasons. First, because I feel right at home here in Ottawa and in Canada. Second, I'm not actually representing the foundation here today, though I will explain a little of what I'm doing and what the foundation is doing. Third, I think it can be potentially more interesting to the committee if I give some personal anecdotes and some personal experience from my time in the field in the subject matter. Lastly, of course, it's just more fun that way to prepare and to engage.

I want to congratulate you as a committee for spending some time on the situation of children and youth in the world, particularly on the role that Canada can play in protection of children and youth.

I think Canadians believe that youth and children should have a chance to reach their full potential. I think this is one of the many core beliefs that we share. Sometimes out there in the world, I think our Canadian beliefs, our belief system, could be expressed better to others with a more focused approach and results through action. I think the way Canada has shown leadership and focus in children and youth is fabulously helpful in that way. I'm a very proud Canadian in this way, in fact, in every way.

I just came back from Africa where I have spent most of my time since I started to work with Howard Buffett in November. I did not intend to start this presentation talking about the news coming out of North Africa and the Mediterranean, the news of capsized boats, and the tragic drowning of migrants trying to get into Europe and beyond. But seeing groups of migrants at the Brussels airport reminded me again that where children and youth are threatened most is where local living conditions are the worst, and that's where chaotic and now often tragic migration originates.

Many are now saying that a solutions approach to migration, to protection issues more generally, must look at root causes, and they are right. It must be an integrated and coherent approach. Child protection is an important lens to focus development, foreign policy, and even trade priorities, and your amalgamated department should be more effective if it works coherently and together.

But I want to make a clear point here that policy dialogue and articulation of what should be done is important, but vulnerable children and youth do not substantively benefit from it. Obviously, they only benefit when the dialogue, the policy, the external engagement, such as our discussion today, leads to action by leaders, by community leaders, including parents, to make things better for them. In that way, advancing Canadian policy can be more effective by further empowering embassies abroad supporting Canadian beliefs in your countries of focus and through multilateral partners and NGOs working towards local solutions.

Fortunately, there are many Canadians out there who get results through action, who walk the talk, and Canada has a good results-based and accountability agenda that promotes action where it matters. From here in Ottawa we should always ask what good we are doing with the resources we spend where they are needed most.

Here's a country example. Howard and I are doing a lot in and for Rwanda these days. It is a country I know well, having worked there among the war and genocide in 1994 and 1995 as a humanitarian official and as a WFP country representative from 2000 to 2004. Now, one can talk about their experience in Rwanda and the region in many ways, but let me just say that the situation for children and youth has improved. The image I have now is of children swimming and playing in the rivers and schoolyards there, because that is what I'm seeing. Not long ago it wasn't like that. What a remarkable transition. They now talk of reaching middle income status. You can see development in Rwanda in the kids' faces and in the infrastructure that supports opportunities to grow.

Stability, growth, and good governance go a long way in reducing child trafficking, child soldiers, child sex workers, and net migration. The groups of migrants I saw the other day in Brussels were not from Rwanda.

The transition from an emergency to development in Rwanda was hugely aided by Canadian support. Furthermore, the World Food Programme, the agency where I worked for 18 years, was the largest multilateral contributor in the humanitarian relief stage. Right from the start we worked to contribute to solutions. It is truly remarkable that Rwanda is now food self-sufficient. .

Other agencies were part of the team approach. Country leadership always mattered and country capacity was supported. In fact, Rwandans would accept nothing less.

Canada, as the second largest donor to the WFP, traditionally and through support for a multilateral presence there in many other ways, has helped make this happen. Because of this positive change, Howard and I are working with Rwandans on a big idea for modernized, sustainable, agricultural growth. It's about making very low-income, small-scale farmers more productive through investments in modernizing agriculture. Improving nutrition will be a key success. This will contribute an example of change driven by action which will generate growth and thereby increase opportunities for children and youth. I believe it will help further stabilize conditions for child protection.

Let me focus now on nutrition, an area where Canada's leadership in the world gets results. I can say from deep personal experience that malnutrition is a child protection issue. Malnourished children are vulnerable children. They are children in need of protection. Thankfully, when it comes to malnutrition, many of the solutions are well known to us, and there are many actors globally who are making a difference. I sit on the board of directors of one of the best, the Micronutrient Initiative, based right here in Ottawa, Canada. The Micronutrient Initiative has a Canadian postal code and a global reputation for excellence, reach, and impact in combatting malnutrition.

One of my recommendations for the committee is for Canada to continue to support the MI and to be vocal about and proud of that support. At every opportunity Canada should encourage other donors to support MI, so it moves toward being a global institution based in Canada and increases its impact in that way.

Another board where I am engaged is at the the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It is a Swiss registered NGO based in Geneva with status as a global institution and with a progressively inclusive governance model which was set up to include donors, implementing governments, private sector representatives, NGOs, and also people representing communities themselves, people affected or infected by the three diseases. It's a model that works quite well. One of the ways it does so is by ensuring rights based protection issues are given their due in dialogue, policy agreements, and country programs.

For example, one of the challenges we are now working on is a new strategy for adolescent girls in east and southern Africa where AIDS prevalence is highest. The region contains 53% of the people in the world living with HIV and a total of 5% of the world's population.

I was posted as a WFP representative in Zambia for four years where it seemed that the biggest growth industry was funeral parlours. In this region of Africa, young women aged 15 to 24 account for one in three new HIV infections. There are some 6,000 new infections every week even now. So HIV prevention, including innovative approaches that get at the root causes, is urgent.

Girls get infected largely for economic reasons. We know that from cash transfer studies in the region. We have studies that show that cash transfers to adolescent girls, as part of social protection schemes, reduce prevalence rates dramatically. Put simply, girls are much less likely to have sex and get infected with a payment of $25 a month or less.

I am not here to advocate for funding such a scheme through the global fund. In fact they are not yet at that stage in administrative planning, but I will say that I do not think any more young girls should be infected with HIV through sex when there are alternative ways of addressing the economic root cause.

These are my personal reflections. Thank you again for the invitation to speak here.

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