181 Quotes by Jan Egeland

We're sending around a hat now, we don't know how much is in the hat when it's coming back - in an emergency situation,

Then, we also need to have credible Somali institutions being established inside Somalia and local and regional peace agreements to be brokered.

The number one priority is to get to those who have nothing. If we don't, we will become a disaster within a disaster.

So it's a nightmare trying to reach community after community which are homeless, roofless, without food, without water. It is this race against time I fear we are now losing for many of these outlying villages.

More is currently at stake in terms of lives saved or lost in Africa than on any other continent. As humanitarian workers, we cannot accept that so many lives are lost every year on this continent to preventable diseases, neglect and senseless brutality.

The big non-governmental organizations, the ones with which we work all over the world, understood the value of coordination. The same cannot be said about all the newer players on the ground.

The backdrop is a dramatic one in Zimbabwe, one of the most dramatic in the world. Life expectancy has plummeted from around 63 years in the late 1980s and early 1990s to 33.9 years in 2004. This is a meltdown. This is a nearly halving of life expectancy.

My heart goes out to the children of North Korea.

That had been one of our fears. I think it has not been the case.