Aid Distribution Quotes

It takes four months to ship food aid and 40 percent of the cost is in the shipping. People cannot eat shipping costs. We have had people die when there are surpluses in the markets.

Famine has wreaked havoc in Ethiopia for so long, it would be stupid not to be sensitive to the risk of such things occurring. But there has not been a famine on our watch - emergencies, but no famines.

Let's help people in this country with the resources we have.

The aid system is broken. The international aid system was designed for the 20th century. However, we are in the 21st century.

When we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help.

News reports can overwhelm us. We can be appalled, we can sympathise. But what is hard to grasp is the sense that, at this moment, people are working, organising - not just at an executive level, but on the floor, in the warehouse. A man is packing a box of oral rehydration tablets; maternity kits are being prepared; education kits are being packed. And somewhere, tomorrow, those boxes will be unpacked and a child with life-threatening diarrhoea will be saved, a baby will be born in more hygienic circumstances, a girl will receive her first exercise book and her first pencil.

If you take all the food aid, America is by far the most generous country. If you take the direct aid, we're very generous. But when you add on our private contributions - see, our tax system encourages private citizens to donate to organisations that, for example, help the folks in Africa. And when you take the combined effort of US taxpayers' money plus US citizens' donations, we're very generous. And we'll do more.

America needs to rethink how we distribute our foreign aid around the world.

After 9/11, the American Red Cross received more than half a billion dollars in donations to help the victims of the terrorist attacks. The families of the victims were already well-provided for by various government funds, so Red Cross simply drew a line across lower Manhattan and offered everyone there financial assistance, whether they needed it or not.

Our humanitarian aid system is sick and needs to be fixed. It needs to get a reality check and get back humanity.

We should stop giving aid to countries that hate us..

The mercy caravans are through there the medicine refugees flowing out. It makes the United States look very bad here. And much more like an occupation force than it did before.

President Obama has pledged $3 billion to aid poor nations. All of that $3 billion is going to the United States.

For a long time, rich countries have promised to reduce poverty but have failed to match their words with adequate action. Of course, some important progress has been made and millions of lives have been saved, but millions more could be saved.

What we need to do is increase the totality of money that is given to the poorest areas and then we can do more on prevention but we have crucial needs at the moment just to get people out of poverty and to get the eight hundred million people that go to bed at night hungry, give them some food and some hope.

Once again, victims of disaster have turned to the UN and the international community in their time of need, .. The world needs the UN's leadership in these times, and the UN needs the world's support. We are communicating with the UN and its agencies to learn where UN Foundation funds may be of greatest assistance to the UN's relief efforts.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people.

Those who lived in peaceful nations had looked the other way as members of their own species starved on their door step.

Since world demand [for foreign aid] exceeds are ability to supply, we are going to have to concentrate our emergency assistance in areas where it will be most effective.

First, those images help us understand the general and specific magnitude of disaster caused by the tsunami. The huge outpouring of aid would not have happened without those images.

I used to work with a relief group that took care of the people in the dump. We took them food and water and medicine and built homes and took them to church services, whatever was needed.

There are going to be situations where people are going to go without assistance. That's just the facts of life.

In this financial year we will be spending at least $1.5 billion on foreign aid and we cannot be sure that this money will be properly spent, as corruption and mismanagement in many of the recipient countries are legend.

Conflict and callous politics drive famine.

George W. Bush was good as his word. He visited the Gulf states 17 times; went 13 times to New Orleans. Laura Bush made 24 trips. Bush saw that $126 billion in aid was sent to the Gulf's residents, as some members of his own party in Congress balked.