Paul Farmer Quotes

Development donors ... put a positive spin on awful recipient governments by asserting that while things are bad, they are getting better.

I have big hope for the Canadian government to help Somalia with something concrete and tangible. I haven't seen that.

Government funding that's coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It's really palpable - it's making a huge difference saving lives.

The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.

No community ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called civilization

The question of our time is rapidly becoming can government get things done?

In Afghanistan, I was talking to Afghan elders who were world-weary of a lack of sustained attention from their own government and from the international community to stop problems early.

When I came in, Haiti was not governed by Haitians anymore. Probably mostly by NGOs. And that has done what to Haiti? It has weakened our institution.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Governments of rich countries spend some $6bn of tax money a year on disaster relief and development aid overseas, while each new earthquake, famine or tidal wave can attract 1,000 aid organisations, from the United Nations Children's Fund and Oxfam to the 'Jesus Brigades' of the American south and other charitable adventurers.

The Scottish Government's international development work began in 2005 with a £3 million budget focused solely on Malawi, reflecting the historic links between our two countries.

India has been contributing very much to the reconstruction of Afghanistan; we are strongly engaged there.

Toward the middle and end of the Fifties, West European countries became somewhat more important as providers of aid to underdeveloped countries. It was partly due to the prodding of the United States that these countries, as they regained economic viability, should shoulder their share of the aid burden.

Rich countries have been sending aid to poor countries for the last 60 years. And, by and large, this has failed.

But you are absolutely right that when the international community decides to help in a meaningful manner a country like Afghanistan, then coordination between the various actors that are involved in these processes is very, very difficult indeed.

I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.

[For those peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization .... the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations ...

All nations are not ready for this.

We seek to move from aid to trade.

In general the principle of the World Trade Organization … is that sovereignty and democratic rights have to be subordinated to the rights of investors

To make a State appear necessary, any would-be State must first destroy the natural order and create a Hobbesian "anarchy" characterized by looting and vandalizing.

After 43 years and $568 billion in foreign aid to the continent, Africa remains trapped in economic stagnation.

Donors have too often appeared to shore up secretive regimes with loans and assistance, the details of which are kept from the citizens they are ostensibly intended to help. In some countries, these citizens are now expected to make good the loans plundered by their former leaders with the apparent acquiescence of the lenders.

I have told my people that we are not second class citizens. We can get something done.

The overriding purpose of foreign assistance must be genuine development, not the assuaging of Western guilt or the care and feeding of the massive network of career professionals, non-profit organizations and private sector companies that constitute the global aid industry.