Michel Martelly Quotes

In doing their work, they [NGOs -- Non-governmental organizations] often end up undermining the government. They hire away its best people, and more fundamentally, their prominence teaches citizens to look to them for service rather than to pressure the government to provide them. This tension between wanting to replace an ineffective state and trying not to undermine it further is a common one faced by outside actors…

The problem with Mexico isn't so much the men who govern but the lack of rules to govern by and the absence of institutions to rule with.

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.

As we begin to leave Afghanistan, are we fooling ourselves about what we are leaving behind or what we have promised the people of Afghanistan? Especially the women and girls?

African leaders work really under severe limitations and constraints.

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

Under the all-encompassing aid system, too many places in Africa continue to flounder under inept, corrupt and despotic regimes who spend their time courting and catering to the demands of the army of aid organizations.

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.

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.

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.

Too many African countries have already hit rock-bottom - ungoverned, poverty-stricken, and lagging further and further behind the rest of the world each day; there is nowhere further to go down.

Oil wealth has been a curse on us, made us weak and docile.

Everyone with all those good intentions came to help Indonesia rebuild from the tsunami; but the co-ordination problem was very big, because they came with their own way of doing business; they came with the inflexibility of their own governance.

Honduras was the original 'banana republic,' and its poverty remains extreme.

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.

If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it's hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.

I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

If free elections were held today, all agree privately Communists would win. Future depends on organizing all resources to resettle refugees, sustain now bankrupt government.

Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary, in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries.

I call on all the countries of the world, especially the donor countries, to speed up their contributions so that the Palestinian people may overcome their economic and social problems and proceed with reconstruction and the rebuilding of infrastructures.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

Every country, every donation is a different case, and there are many cases where NGOs are getting support from foreign countries for good purposes.

You can't expect humanitarian and development agencies to rebuild Syria. There is not enough money. There is not enough capacity. There are not enough skills.

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.

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