The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.
— Nicholas Kristof
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.
Half a million women die each year around the world in pregnancy. It's not biology that kills them so much as neglect.
The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing.
I try to be careful about wording. One of the things I've tried to combat in my blog is the notion that journalists are arrogant and unconcerned with the readership.
I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there.
The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we're seeing 100,000 victims per month.
While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction.
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.
Every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea.
The world spends $40 billion a year on pet food.
Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health.
Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female.
It's easy to keep issuing blame to Republicans or the president.
The bulk of the emails tend to come after a column. I can get about 2,000 after a column.
As soon as I was old enough to drive, I got a job at a local newspaper. There was someone who influenced me. He wrote a column for The Guardian from this tiny village in India.
I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight.
It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case.
You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.
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.
Humans pull together in an odd way when they're in the wilderness. It's astonishing how few people litter and how much they help one another. Indeed, the smartphone app to navigate the Pacific Crest Trail, Halfmile, is a labor of love by hikers who make it available as a free download.
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.
We all might ask ourselves why we tune in to these more trivial matters and tune out when it comes to Darfur.
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.
There are other issues I have felt more emotionally connected to, like China, where I lived and worked for some time. I was living there when Tiananmen Square erupted.
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.
The photos were taken by African Union soldiers. People in Congress saw them. I thought if people could see them, there would be public outcry. No one would be able to say, We just didn't know what was going on there.
A little bit of attention can go a long way.
One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot.
Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised.
