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.
Antonio GuterresRead
There is never a humanitarian solution for a humanitarian crisis. The solutions for the humanitarian crisis are always political ones.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humanitarian crises require political solutions rather than purely humanitarian efforts.
Antonio Guterres emphasizes that while humanitarian crises often evoke a strong emotional response and a desire to provide aid, the root causes and lasting solutions are deeply rooted in political issues. Addressing these crises effectively requires engaging with political processes and frameworks rather than relying solely on charity or relief efforts.
Themes
HumanitarianCrisisPoliticsSolutionsAid
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about international responses to refugees during a panel on humanitarian issues.
More from Antonio Guterres
All quotes →The world's problems transcend borders.
Antonio GuterresRead
Humanitarian response, sustainable development, and sustaining peace are three sides of the same triangle.
Antonio GuterresRead
The fact that societies are becoming increasingly multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious is good. Diversity is a strength, not a weakness.
Antonio GuterresRead
Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.
Antonio GuterresRead
When counterterrorist policies are used to suppress peaceful protests and legitimate opposition movements, shut down debate, target human rights defenders, or stigmatize minorities, they fail, and we all lose. Indeed, such responses may cause further resentment and instability and contribute to radicalization.
Antonio GuterresRead
Similar quotes
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.
William BlackstoneRead
Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.
Alan MooreRead
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.
Margaret AtwoodRead
Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another.
Geert HofstedeRead
The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.
Slavoj IekRead