Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to be here to provide information on CIDA's future programming in Afghanistan. I'd like to first contextualize our future programming within the previous development successes in Kandahar and within the context of CIDA's aid effectiveness agenda.
[Translation]
CIDA has a long history of engagement in Afghanistan. Before the fall of the Taliban in 2001, CIDA's assistance to Afghanistan consisted largely of humanitarian aid, and ranged between $10 and $20 million per year for basic human needs.
Following the International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan, held in January 2002 in Tokyo, Canada responded to the Government of Afghanistan'S appeal for long- term development investments by significantly bolstering our commitment to the country. Canada is now one of the world's top donors to Afghanistan, our largest-ever bilateral aid recipient.
[English]
Recently we've implemented the recommendations of the Honourable John Manley and the independent panel on Canada's future role in Afghanistan. We've progressed with our allies and development partners in securing a better future for the people of Kandahar, and we continue to work with them and the Government of Afghanistan toward common goals.
CIDA has been responsible for delivering on the three signature projects and Canada's six priorities in Afghanistan: strengthening Afghanistan institutional capacity to deliver basic services and promote economic growth; providing humanitarian assistance to extremely vulnerable people; and advancing Afghanistan's capacity for democratic governance.
[Translation]
The three signature projects have also been prominent among CIDA's activities since 2008 in Afghanistan.
In the first signature project, Canada is supporting the rehabilitation of the Dahla Dam and its irrigation and canal system, generating jobs and fostering agriculture. In our second signature project, we are involved in the construction of 50 schools in Kandahar. Through the third signature project, Canada is expanding support for polio immunization.
As we progress in our efforts, Canadian contributions are significantly benefiting the people of Kandahar. Our future programming in Afghanistan is intoned by these successes and reflects Canadian expertise and experience.
[English]
On November 16 the government announced four key areas of focus for Canada's post-2011 engagement in Afghanistan. The first is investing in the future of Afghan children and youth through development programming in education and health, especially for women and girls. The second is advancing security, the rule of law, and human rights, including through the provision of up to 950 trainers for the Afghan security forces. The third is promoting regional diplomacy. The fourth is helping to deliver humanitarian assistance.
[Translation]
Of these four areas, CIDA will be responsible for delivering programming in education, maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH), humanitarian assistance and, jointly with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, on human rights. CIDA's program will be based out of Kabul and will be national in scope.
[English]
Our programming priorities have been developed in consultation with the Government of Afghanistan, with Canadian and Afghan civil society, and with partner multilateral organizations. Canada's programming is aligned with the priorization and implementation plan of the Afghan national development strategy, known as the ANDS, and directly reflects Afghan needs and priorities.
Since the London and Kabul conferences held last year, the Government of Afghanistan has established thematic clusters and national priority programs that have allowed the international community to focus its efforts on a targeted set of reconstruction and development priorities. Canada will continue to look for opportunities to support the development of the clusters and national priority programs, which are essential to enhancing the Government of Afghanistan's capacity, accountability, and ownership.
[Translation]
Before I get into the specifics of our areas of focus, I would like to emphasize that our future programming is also framed within CIDA's aid effectiveness agenda.
The Government of Canada has committed to making Canada's international assistance more efficient, focused, and accountable. Toward that end, CIDA has undertaken specific steps to make its work more effective in line with international agreements and recognized best practices.
[English]
As part of this strategy, the agency is focusing its efforts geographically and thematically. CIDA now has 20 countries of focus and three priority themes: increasing food security, securing the future of children and youth, and stimulating sustainable economic growth. In line with internationally endorsed principles, we are supporting efforts that demonstrate local country ownership and leadership of development policies and strategies, based on locally identified needs and priorities. Finally, we are committed to efficiency and accountability, including communicating clearly and openly with Canadian partners. As Afghanistan is one of the agency's 20 countries of focus, programming there between 2011 and 2014 will reflect these and other key aid effectiveness principles.
I am going to confine myself to the broad themes, beginning with education. Turning to our work in Afghanistan, we have had considerable experience and success in the education sector. Working with the Afghan Ministry of Education through the education quality improvement program, which I'll call EQUIP from now on, CIDA has supported the construction and rehabilitation of more than 800 schools across the country and funded the training of more than 110,000 teachers and principals. We have also supported the establishment of more than 4,000 community-based schools throughout the country, which have provided basic education to more than 125,000 hard-to-reach children, of whom approximately 80% are girls.
Building on this experience, we anticipate that we'll continue to support enhancements to formal education through government programs and non-formal community-based education in order to increase access to education for girls. In respect of quality education, we are considering ways to improve primary instruction by supporting pre-service training, particularly to women teachers, and to standardize teacher certification and accreditation.
Finally, in order to enhance participation and Afghan ownership in education, we are considering approaches to increasing community participation, as evidence shows that strengthening community participation increases public sector accountability at local, regional, and national levels. We will also look for opportunities to promote meaningful ministry reforms that enhance the quality of education governance.
Moving to health, Afghanistan has been identified as one of 10 countries to be included in the roll-out of Canada's G-8 initiative on maternal, newborn, and child health. As in the education sector, our future plans in the health sector build on significant experience and successes to date. One of our signature projects, our support for polio eradication, is particularly well known. Through that signature project, Canada has supported the ongoing vaccination of an estimated 7.2 million Afghan children, an effort that has reduced the number of new cases to just 25 in 2010 as compared to 31 cases in 2009. Over time, the polio signature project has also been used as a platform for the delivery of other essential health services for children under five, including micronutrient supplementation and deworming treatments.
We will also draw on our experience in providing services to mothers and young children in Kandahar, using this experience to inform our work at the national level. For example, in Kandahar, we supported the establishment of a maternal waiting home, a model that has encouraged women and young children, many of whom had never seen the inside of a hospital, to access life-saving secondary and tertiary care.
Moving forward, Canada will continue to be a leading donor in polio eradication and will focus its efforts in supporting the delivery of maternal and newborn child health services to underserved areas of the country at a more national scale. Targeted at the neediest and most vulnerable mothers and children, CIDA's health programs will attempt to address major issues at all levels of the health care system from the community to the hospital.
[Translation]
To enhance the quality of health services, our program will support Afghan-led efforts that improve the health and nutritional status of mothers, newborns and children under the age of five. In keeping with the G8 Muskoka Initiative, Canadian assistance will help strengthen the national health system, improve nutrition, and reduce the burden of diseases and illnesses in Afghanistan.
I will now address the issue of humanitarian assistance. As one of the world's poorest countries, Afghanistan remains vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters. Humanitarian assistance is therefore another area where needs remain stark. Nearly one-third of Afghans are chronically or seasonally food insecure due to conflict, natural disaster, weak income and employment opportunities, as well as inefficient agricultural practices.
To reduce this vulnerability, CIDA will continue to assist the Government of Afghanistan in responding to natural and man-made crises with food and non-food aid.
[English]
Canada has been one of the top donors to humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan. We have provided significant support to meet the needs of vulnerable populations, including refugees, returnees, and internally displaced persons. One of our most effective strategies has been to support the stockpiling of pre-positioned non-food items to promote timely and effective responses to emergencies. These stockpiles have been released to respond to localized emergencies in Kandahar and across Afghanistan, most recently in response to the flooding that affected Pakistan and many of the provinces of Afghanistan.
To enhance the quality of our assistance, we'll be looking for innovative and aid-effective approaches that bridge gaps between emergency relief and sustainable development, while we integrate gender perspectives into our humanitarian interventions. For example, experience in other countries in the region has pointed to the importance of considering such issues as the design of camps, how and to whom supplies are provisioned, the importance of providing sexual and reproductive health services as part of the humanitarian response, and violence prevention. As part of our effort to move from emergency relief to sustainable development, we'll be looking for opportunities to support preventative measures that assist local officials who respond to predictable or recurrent emergencies.
[Translation]
On the human rights front, CIDA, in consultation with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, is specifically looking to promote women's rights by addressing barriers that prevent women and girls from accessing services such as health and education.
We are also looking at options to continue our work to enhance the ability of human rights institutions to educate and empower citizens regarding their rights and to monitor, document and investigate abuses.
Finally, building on our past success in supporting women's participation in elections, we are looking to support initiatives that increase the role of women in decision-making bodies.
Agency-wide, governance, gender equality and the environment are important cross-cutting themes that contribute to enabling and sustaining our results.
[English]
No success has been as transformative as the increased numbers of girls attending school in Afghanistan. Study after study has demonstrated how critical investments that help reduce gender inequality are helping to alleviate persistent poverty. Going forward, as our minister outlined on November 16, we will be placing a particular focus on women in all of our programming.
[Translation]
While significant progress has been achieved by the Government of Afghanistan and the international community in improving the situation and rights of Afghan women and girls, gender inequalities remain significant. Pervasive gender-based violence and human rights abuses continue, ranging from forced underage marriage, honour killings, trafficking, domestic violence and abuse.
Insecurity and lack of basic services also temper many of the gains made. Indicators pertaining to women's health, education, poverty and rights remain among the lowest in the world. CIDA will therefore work with the Government of Afghanistan and civil society to ensure that progress towards gender equality continues by enhancing the quality of, and access to, education and health services, as well as humanitarian assistance.
[English]
Finally, in all of our work, we're placing an emphasis on promoting accountability and responsible stewardship. This includes improving the Afghan government's capacity to manage public finance and execute projects. It also includes emphasizing participation and transparency in decision-making processes.
[Translation]
Our work in Afghanistan has delivered impressive results since 2003, but a continued investment is necessary to help Afghans rebuild their country.
[English]
I'm glad to take any questions. You have me here for a long, long time.
Mr. Chair, if I could, I struggled with the statement because I was trying to give a broad picture of Afghanistan and not focus just on Kandahar. But I do want to assure the committee, as I stated when I was last here, and as I continue believe, that we are well on track to meeting.... The 50-school commitment was 50 schools to be built or rehabilitated in Kandahar, and we are on track to do that. For the 3,000 teachers to be trained in Kandahar, we believe we are fully on track. So I wouldn't want to leave the impression that we aren't going to finish that.
I did want to say, though, that we were doing work throughout the country, not just in Kandahar, which leads me to the 110,000 teachers and the 800 schools and other stuff that we've done.
On the question of the long term and the focus, as we developed, for planning purposes, the ongoing program post-2011, we are very deliberately trying to build on those successes that we've had, which is why we're focusing on education and we're focusing on children, which we believe is where we play a leadership role as we move into 2011. By the same token, we're continuing to work where we've had success on the health side, including polio immunization, and how we can build upon that.
On the issue of some of the things that we're not doing, the programming in Afghanistan was a little over $200 million, and pursuant to the Manley panel, half of that was to go to Kandahar. We achieved, I think, between 48% and 52%, depending on when you measure it. The ongoing programming will be focused nationally, which doesn't mean that we won't continue to hopefully get some drawdown and reach into the provinces, but our $100-million-plus will be focused on national programs that will try to build upon the past successes that we've had.
As to things that we will or won't do, by focusing on education and on health there are other issues that we won't be doing, we won't be moving onwards. We were doing economic growth, particularly around the agricultural improvements around the Dahla Dam. We believe—and we have examined it with other donors—that work will be ongoing. It won't be done by us at this point.
On the issue of capacity-building, we will continue to work and build upon past lessons. I'm hoping to—
:
Thank you. This is great as we plan our ongoing programming.
I just pulled the numbers on literacy before I came here. Afghanistan is at the very bottom of the human development index on literacy. It's at the very bottom of the human development index on maternal and child mortality. The additional thing with Afghanistan is that there is a significant difference between the literacy rates of women and those of men. There is a 4.5% general rate of literacy in Kandahar, and a 1.5% rate for women. The figure of 4.5% is pretty low anyway, but 1.5% is lower.
The same thing goes for the overall literacy rate in Afghanistan, which is about 14.5%—I'm thinking from memory—and 12.5% for women.
Before we began our work there in 2001, there were about 400,000 kids in school. They were almost entirely boys. The Afghan numbers themselves put the number of children now in school at 6.2 million.
The barriers to women going to school or girls going to school, aside from various other issues, include things like security. Besides working on what we've done in the training of teachers and in providing access to school, we've had to deal with things like providing boundaries around the school so that mothers will feel comfortable taking their kids to school. We've had to deal with providing transportation to get them to school.
Often the issue is having women teachers. Parents won't send their girl children to male teachers. Obviously there's always been a focus, as we've looked at teacher training colleges, on providing not only training for women teachers but also the same sorts of security mechanisms, including lavatories for women and barriers around the teacher training colleges so the women can go there, as well as transportation for the women to get there.
One of the projects, which seems very local but becomes very general, is actually providing a female dormitory in a teacher training college that allows women to train. We can then disperse them around Kandahar province or around the school.
We're also looking at working with parents and communities in the various communities and at the different sites so they can identify those issues that are the barriers, whether those be transport, security, or other aspects or other types of things that prevent them from going to school, including the ability to get there at a different time. We've tried to work with the communities to look at those issues.
We're looking at working with the communities and community ownership and dealing with community-based education in some instances where no matter what you do, you're not going to get kids to go to school. As much as you train those teachers and provide those schools or rehabilitate them, you also have to have an alternative, which in some instances, in those areas, means providing community-based education, either in someone's home or in another type of community. Aside from the schools, we've established 4,000 community-based schools.
Just very quickly, one of the issues to point out as we move on in forward programming is that Canada, very early on, was the leader at what was then called the education review board, working with the Ministry of Education, to deal with problems that were national in scope. Then they could draw down locally. It eventually became like a human resource development board.
It's as important to work at the local and community level as it is to work with other donors, so that when we move from $200 million to $100 million, we're still leveraging other efforts, and we'll continue to do that.
:
I'll leave aside the signature projects, as you said.
On indicators and successes, according to the minister herself, on where we've come from, today 66% of the population has access to primary health care within two hours' walking distance of their homes, up from 9% in 2000; 1,450 doctors, nurses, midwives, and community health workers have received training from Canada; and seven million children have received polio vaccinations. That's an immunization project almost entirely funded by Canada.
There are 4,000 community-based schools and learning centres that have been established in areas of the country that were critically under-served in the past, and where some of schools didn't exist. In Afghanistan there are 158,000 trained teachers, up from 21,000 in 2002, and 29% of them are women. Six million children are in school and a third of them are girls, up from 400,000, of whom virtually none were girls.
There have been 500 square kilometres of land cleared of land mines, and more than 500,000 Afghans have received education on the risk of land mines. That's outside of the three signature projects.
In addition to that, on the capacity-building issue, we've worked in close consultation with the Ministry of Education there in developing curricula and working with community processes to develop school boards. We've worked on legislative drafting. We've worked with institutions that have become fairly independent and renowned, including the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
I think we have achieved great ends in a country that had virtually nothing and was seized with 30 years of war. Where that happens, it would be disingenuous of me not to point out that all of the human development indicators are still very low for Afghanistan, from literacy rates to health care indicators, so there's a lot to do.
We would continue to do that by building, taking into account other comments that have been put on those successes. We would continue to focus on education; use the polio initiative and deal with that; and contribute wherever we could on the capacity-building side, while not losing the role we've played as a good donor on the humanitarian front.
So I think the investment has been well served. On the issue of magnitude, it's fine to say it's from $200 million to $100 million, but it's still one of Canada's biggest development initiatives ever, and will be one of the top five development recipients of Canada's development aid.