Alok Sharma Quotes

The Millennium Development Goals were a pledge to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity, and free the world from extreme poverty. The MDGs, with eight goals and a set of measurable time-bound targets, established a blueprint for tackling the most pressing development challenges of our time.

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.

Our aid budget has a crucial role to play in shaping the world according to our universal values of democracy, enterprise and justice.

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.

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.

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

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

One of the things we have to acknowledge is that if you look at Haiti, many billions of dollars have gone into development aid there that have not been effective.

Of course, aid is only one small part of international development. Some of the greatest benefits to the world's poorest can be achieved through policy changes by developed countries.

To make sustainable progress in reducing extreme poverty will require improvements in both the quantity and quality of aid.

I experienced how foreign aid for large-scale vaccination projects helps to save the life of children and thus give a real input to growth and to escaping poverty.

Midori has been a steadfast supporter of the United Nations, as a Messenger of Peace and more recently by encouraging our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

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.

Let me first say that I don't think the millennium target of cutting global poverty in half is an impossible or abstract target. I think it is a real and achievable goal.

I want to eradicate poverty. I think that there's a tremendous passion for that inside the World Bank.

In the developing countries the United Nations doesn't mean frustration, confrontation or condemnation. It means environmental sanitation, agricultural production, telecommunications, the fight against illiteracy, the great struggle against poverty ignorance and disease.

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.

As a global society, we have the technology, resources and the know-how to make a massive difference to living standards everywhere, including for refugees.

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

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.

Making sure that mothers are educated means we can lift more people out of poverty and build a more inclusive and sustainable society.

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.

The true measure of success for the U.N. is not how much we promise, but how much we deliver for those who need us most.

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the related Accra Agenda for Action, are useful policy instruments that set out the mutual responsibilities of donors and recipient countries.