We have not reached agreement with the government on the text (of an appeal), we have not agreed on how many are affected, how to help them, the role of (non-governmental organizations) NGOs and other...

It is, in my view, not right to sit with reconstruction money for one year from now if we’re not sure whether those people will be alive one year from now.

We have reason to fear that 2006 could be as bad as 2005.

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

Stopping these attacks against women, children, the displaced and refugees and ensuring their protection is our number one priority.

I’ve never seen such devastation before. We are in the sixth day of operation, and every day the scale of devastation is getting wider.

I would salute the very effective American efforts to warn the populations of the imminent danger and the very successful evacuation.

The coast is low, it takes the full blast of the tsunami which was at its highest at that point, and now the villages are gone,

Tens of thousands of people will not get any assistance today, because it is too dangerous.

We have enough to keep people alive, but we can’t at all change their totally inhuman kind of situation in camps where they cannot live without being attacked.

I don’t know how you evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from the Himalayas — the most effective military alliance in the world should be able to know that.

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...

We want to stay as long as we can. As we speak we have had to suspend action in many areas. Tens of thousands of people will not get any assistance because it’s too dangerous...

It is the first, crude way to get food there. It is not, however, a good way to get water and medicine distributed.

These are atrocities of incalculable proportions. The whole world…must increase pressure on the government of Sudan to stop fighting and improve access for humanitarian groups.

The world did exactly the right thing in the tsunami. I always feel that this should be our new standard.

I would say every society in the world is not preparing adequately for catastrophic events.

I think now Somalia is turning a corner and we can, with the new political development, build on momentum – really build a peaceful future.

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.

This appeal, … is truly forward-looking in that it attempts to avert hunger and at the same time promote sustainable recovery of livelihoods. Investing in prevention will prove much more cost effective than providing emergency...

These are people who have a strong attachment to their ancestral homes,

Haiti is the most vulnerable society in the region and Cuba is one of the best prepared, if not the best prepared for natural disasters. The same hurricane which would take zero lives in Cuba...

It’s a cruel reality. But after a week, very few people survive.

The most important and urgent appeal we have to make is for an immediate cease-fire. Initial reports from the cease-fire talks being held in N’Djamena in Chad are not very encouraging.

If it continues to be so dangerous to do humanitarian work, we may not be able to sustain our operations for 2.5 million people,

the race against the clock.

We did well in the emergency phase, … But the reconstruction went slower than we had hoped.

In the second week you will see much more orderly relief. The first week is always pretty chaotic.

But we have not yet decided if and when I will endeavor to go back.

The whole world has been really shaken and moved by the images of widespread damage and suffering.

Nowhere else on earth is so much at stake as in Africa. It is here where most lives are at stake.

The devastation sweeping America’s southern coast is a ‘wake-up call’ to the world about the dangers of global warming ,

probably be many billions of dollars. However, we cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages that have just been wiped out.

The United Nations stands ready to help with any kind of disaster expertise that might be required … in full recognition that the United States is the country in the world that possesses the greatest...

The Oslo process was a road to peace,

All in all we expect the U.N. involvement to grow as we expect there to be a very considerable increase in the number of international relief flights to the United States from many parts of...

I think now, we in the international community are belatedly wanting to show our solidarity with the Somali peoples and also do our best to help them move to better times.

However, air drops are being undertaken,

The humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is very serious. The need for international aid is big and growing.

We still are not reaching all below the snow line.

Cuba is one of the best prepared nations to deal with these natural phenomena because it knows exactly what to do in high-risk zones.

I would like to see it being even more quick [than] this response.

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

We need to have a sense of urgency here like we had in the tsunami.

I think that is stingy, really.

Our biggest concern now is that we will have tremendous bottlenecks. Every day there are 60 to 100 trucks coming in from all over Pakistan.

There are issues we disagree on frankly, but we also agree on the importance of the international community to raise its profile in pursuing humanitarian principles.

There is nothing more dangerous than young men with no jobs and a gun. We have to avoid conflicts re-emerging, and for that, support is very much necessary. Sudan cannot do it alone. With no...

We have health kits and school-in-a-box kits that are tailored for immediate use for people that are displace by emergencies, and when such requests come we will answer immediately.

We need a change in mentality. You get a lot of headlines for foodstuffs for those who are already in disasters. You don’t get any headlines for prevention.