Mr. Peter Power:

Yes. The fact is that men take advantage of situations like this to cause abuse. It comes down to basic physical things. In these makeshift camps and shelters - the sports aerodrome there now is to hundreds of families - it is dark at night, there is free movement of people and men always take advantage of those situations. UNICEF is very mindful of this and we are responsible for that aspect of this crisis. Our top expert in the area is a lady called Pernille Ironside, who I met over there and only yesterday, she had a meeting with Government agencies to ascertain how we would deal with this. We will do so in two ways, the first of which is to ensure unaccompanied minors are reunited with their families. We have just received the latest figures from Tacloban and Ormuc, which confirmed that to date, just three children have been identified and reunited with their families but that there are five unaccompanied children. These are children who probably have lost both their parents and possibly siblings as well. We hear terribly tragic stories, perhaps because of families living in clusters, of entire families and first cousins being wiped out in their entirety. The second initiative UNICEF is undertaking under the leadership of Pernille Ironside is to set up child-friendly spaces and already one area in the city of Tacloban has been identified as being the ideal child-friendly space. The reason this is so important - members of this joint committee who visited Za'atari refugee camp would have experienced this - is that children are at their happiest when they are with other children and when they are playing. The absolute need to get children together to play in happy environments is paramount when one is dealing with misery all around, and one of our top priorities is to create these child-friendly spaces. I hope that deals with Deputy Mitchell's question.

Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan asked questions on climate change, on the issue of co-ordination and on the issue of Syria, which I mentioned. On climate change, I must admit it frightened me that nature could cause destruction on this scale. It is frightening what nature can do and we have been told repeatedly by the scientists that climate change involves more severe and more frequent weather events of this nature. Perhaps we have seen the first of many. As for the co-ordination the Deputy mentioned, it is a significant problem in all these natural disasters. The natural human desire to help sometimes means that people get in the way of one another and the need for co-ordination has long been recognised. That was the reason I mentioned the office for the co-ordination for humanitarian affairs, led by Valerie Amos. While her job is to do that, organisations must be mindful not to engage in duplication and, as I mentioned, that was a huge problem in Banda Aceh. One must learn from the lessons of the past but it is just humanitarian care at present, that is, food, water, medical supplies, child protection and clearing. This is before one talks about reconstruction, which is way down the road. On Syria, coping with the Syrian crisis still is an underfunded programme. In June of this year, the one millionth child left Syria to the surrounding countries and dealing with this is costing hundreds of millions of euro and dollars every year. They are underfunded programmes and that is the reason organisations such as UNICEF reach out to people around the world who are concerned about the welfare of children.

We live in a globalised world. If a child suffers half way around the world, we should have the same empathy for that child as if he or she was living next door to us. I hope that in some way answers the three questions.