Peter Maurer Quotes

People in Ethiopia, the Sudan, etc., don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognize the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF, their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump 'UNICEF.'

War zones are dangerous, protests can be violent, also, natural disasters are difficult to cover, so there are going to be risks.

Our assistance in Somalia has been remarkably effective and successful, and we have helped with very small resources - a large group of people and we can now do even more.

Following the devastating India Ocean tsunami of 2004, I founded Chefs for Humanity, modeled after Doctors Without Borders, but comprised of chefs. There wasn't anything out there like it, and there was a definite need for chefs to be able to offer assistance and aid.

I started out doing something little. I went to Africa to spend five weeks putting roofs on a building. I seen the small child that stepped on a land mine. Three months later, I'm back helping pull the land mines out. Little things just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

I really connect with those moments of doing missionary work down there and just seeing the people that are dying from disease and hunger and malnutrition.

It's a different world out there…. humanitarians will have to operate under the cover of arms—or not at all.

The first law of disaster relief could well read: every political decision has humanitarian consequences, and every humanitarian program has political implications.

So many times, genuine health workers and genuine NGO folks are really just trying to help other humans in whatever capacity they can. But they are perceived as being CIA, and therefore, it blocks their effectiveness.

Humanitarian action cannot be held hostage to political ends.

The International Committee of the Red Cross visits roughly half a million detainees in nearly 100 countries each year. It's our job to try to prevent and put an end to torture and ill-treatment.

Humanitarian assistance, once conceived as a short-term relief effort, is increasingly the only substitute for long-term development work in protracted armed conflicts.

I've lived and worked in Brussels and New York at the U.N. and worked all over the world. I would jump on a plane and be in Kabul one week and then Dafur the next.

I think there was an overemphasis in the early stage on militarization rather than directly providing relief. I don't think it has any long-term significance.

Many access roads are too dangerous for relief workers, preventing them from carrying out assessments or reaching people in need.

Juarez is reported to be the most dangerous city in America.

We are looking at what more we can do. As well as a strong security response we need a strong humanitarian one.

News reports can overwhelm us. We can be appalled, we can sympathise. But what is hard to grasp is the sense that, at this moment, people are working, organising - not just at an executive level, but on the floor, in the warehouse. A man is packing a box of oral rehydration tablets; maternity kits are being prepared; education kits are being packed. And somewhere, tomorrow, those boxes will be unpacked and a child with life-threatening diarrhoea will be saved, a baby will be born in more hygienic circumstances, a girl will receive her first exercise book and her first pencil.

We do not read (the law) to elevate accommodation of religious observances over an institution's need to maintain order and safety, ... We have no cause to believe that (the law) would not be applied in an appropriately balanced way, without sensitivity to security concerns.

It is not enough to defend our values at home, in our newspapers and in our institutions. We also have to defend them in the refugee camps of the Middle East, and the ruined ghost towns of Syria.

We need to be able to demonstrate that what we do in today's world, in humanitarian aid, the enormous effort to minimize the tragic situations that we see all over the world, I think, without the U.N., people would suffer much more, and the situation would be much more terrible.

I was actually worried about David Ross safety being in Cleveland. I thought I had to be a bodyguard.

Americans are known for their strength, fortitude, and generosity in times of need. We encourage people in the U.S. and everywhere to give with their hearts, reach out to these victims, and donate what they can to the relief efforts.

It's our duty to get them the things they need when they need it. And it's not happening.

I do a lot of work with the Red Cross, too. As a reporter, before I went to entertainment news, I tended to follow natural disasters. I went to Charleston, South Carolina, after Hurricane Hugo. I went to Miami the year after they were recovering from Hurricane Andrew. I came to California when they were recovering from a big earthquake. I've seen the Red Cross and how they stay there years after a natural disaster. They're not just there when a disaster is happening.