 Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries. |
| You would see people going back to homes that had been burned, putting thatch over their structures again. They still couldn't leave the area without the danger of men being killed or women being raped, but it was a start. |
| Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives. |
| There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in. |
| If President Bush is serious about genocide, an immediate priority is to stop the cancer of Darfur from spreading further, which means working with France to shore up Chad and the Central African Republic. |
| It's easy to keep issuing blame to Republicans or the president. |
| Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female. |
| A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality. |
| The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding. |
| You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change. |
| Random violence is incredibly infectious. |
| Photographs are still being taken but aren't being shown. There's one of a skeleton bound at the wrists with pants still around its ankles; if it was a woman, she was likely raped; if it was a man, he was possibly castrated. |
| The world spends $40 billion a year on pet food. |
| Half a million women die each year around the world in pregnancy. It's not biology that kills them so much as neglect. |
| You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch. |
| The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you, I am just amazed by that. |
| Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health. |
| All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night. |
| There isn't a political price to be paid yet for doing nothing. People need to get upset with President Bush. People need to get upset with their Congressmen. |
| We all might ask ourselves why we tune in to these more trivial matters and tune out when it comes to Darfur. |
