Mr. Maurice Sadlier:

I was going to take the climate question because I used to work for Ms Mary Robinson and Deputy Stanton spoke well on this topic at a side event during the 63rd session of the CSW, or CSW63, that she co-organised with Ms Byrne Nason. Ms Robinson will be happy to hear she had a lasting impact.

We are seeing the effects of the climate change issue in Afghanistan as well. The current hunger crisis is driven in part by the Ukraine crisis, but it is also driven by climate change. We are seeing a major global hunger crisis. It does not just affect a number of countries.

We see an increase in child marriage in Afghanistan because families are pushed to the brink of their coping mechanisms. There is nothing else they can do aside from, ultimately, selling their children into child marriage. We see an increase in inter-partner violence in South Sudan, again because of the stress put on households, including the stress of having to feed one's family and not being able to do so. It is raising a whole load of issues. We see a really strong correlation between the impacts of climate change and gender-based violence, not necessarily always physical violence but also psychosocial and emotional violence. I think we are all having an impact on that.

It is, as I said, a matter of access to services. Many of these places are being washed away, with the banks of the Nile flooding away a health centre and a school. There is erosion and it is really difficult. Deputy Stanton mentioned the Marshall Islands, and there is also Kiribati. We work with the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu as well and with communities that are very remote and cut off from services and that are in very difficult situations. I was in Sierra Leone a few years ago and spent two hours trying to get off a very remote island because of torrential downpours - in the dry season. It was all right for me, but a woman experiencing a very dangerous delivery there who could not get to the mainland, to the hospital, would have been more than likely dead, to be honest. We see an ever-increasing impact of climate change on the well-being of women. It is also driving conflict in lots of places and hampering access to scarce resources.