Each crisis is different, has its own specificities, and we need to look at it critically; look at each one in its own terms.

Children are our future and if we use them in battle, we are destroying the future. We must reclaim them, every one of them, one at a time.

The Arab spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence and everybody else wants it. How about us, when do we get it, when do we make our move? And you have a situation where someone has been in power for decades, where the integrity of elections, democracy and security have really not been debated or discussed and most people suspect that elections are rigged and that the democratic rotation that elections are supposed to ensure doesn't really happen. And when this goes on for a while you are sitting on a powder keg.

Often, we take stability - peace in terms of security and economic activity - to mean a country is doing well. We forget the third and important pillar of rule of law and respect for human rights, because no country can long remain prosperous without that third pillar.

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope... Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition.

It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.

We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face.