Nicola Sturgeon Quotes

Foreign aid is neither a failure nor a panacea. It is, instead, an important tool of American policy that can serve the interests of the United States and the world if wisely administered.

There has long been a debate in the aid community and in Africa about how to most effectively help situations of poverty in developing nations and underprivileged communities.

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

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.

Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.

I think a lot of the problem with foreign aid and things like that is you go in, give a bunch of stuff, and then it runs out. It's about helping them learn how to continue to be sustainable and live.

U.K. aid is responding to our changing world and tackling the great challenges of our time. It is transforming lives in the poorest countries and making the world healthier, safer and more prosperous for everyone.

When Secretary of State for International Development, it was my mission to ensure that every taxpayer pound was spent to serve those in need, and met U.K. development objectives.

Not any amount of aid is going to move Africa forward.

But the Western countries that link their partnership with the poorest countries with respect for democracy also have to consider that they have obligations towards these countries.

In 2005 we have a once in a generation opportunity to deliver a modern Marshall plan for the developing world.

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.

I’m new and have 110 countries to deal with and all I’ve got to deal with is a little bit of foreign aid.

The typical American-funded [foreign aid] project has American contractors who take, between overheads back home and in-the-area administrative fees, 35 to 50 percent. It used to be, by the way, that every developed country did this, but America is about the only one still doing it. And I’ve been trying to break it for a long time …. I hope I don’t have to be buried knowing that we’re still the only rich country in the world that gives this … percentage of foreign-aid money to our own people.

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

The way we need to view aid is as a fulfillment of rights, and Mexico, as other countries around the world, have agreed and signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the covenants of Human Rights and that includes the right to food, the right to water, the right to housing and the right to education.

Foreign aid must be viewed as an investment, not an expense...but when foreign aid is carefully guided and targeted at a specific issue, it can and must be effective.

The test for aid to poor nations is therefore whether it makes them capable of being productive. If it fails to do so, it is likely to make them even poorer in the - not so very - long run.

The concept there was that the small number of developed countries within the Commonwealth should provide assistance. This was not just financial but personal, providing experts and so on, to assist less developed members of the Commonwealth to get on the growing path. And that was part of what we did with South Africa.

What we ask of the developed countries is to let the Third World find a third way.

Some people think African states cannot be trusted with the cookie jar. But there are absolutely good NGOs who have this feeling of human solidarity and who also recognize that their work can only be supplementary to the government.

When people from organizations like the World Bank descended on Third World countries, they always tried to remove obstacles to development, to reduce economic anxiety and uncertainty.

Despite a decade of criticism and budget cuts, the specialised UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the world.

Development does not take place in Washington, DC. Development takes place in the rest of the world.

I feel great identification with the developing world.