Nicholas D. Kristof

Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives.

You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch.

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.

A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality.

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.

It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that’s the case.

Every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea.

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.

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.

I think it’s dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight.

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.

Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female.

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.

There is an element of anger among women who’ve been raped. There’s certainly a major element of humiliation. But it really does seem like a medical condition of shock and horror.

Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health.

It’s easy to keep issuing blame to Republicans or the president.

We all might ask ourselves why we tune in to these more trivial matters and tune out when it comes to Darfur.

Half a million women die each year around the world in pregnancy. It’s not biology that kills them so much as neglect.

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.

The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we’re seeing 100,000 victims per month.

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.

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.

I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there.

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.

The bulk of the emails tend to come after a column. I can get about 2,000 after a column.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren’t actually angry at the president about inaction.

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.

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.

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.

A little bit of attention can go a long way.

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.

Most of the villagers were hiding in the bush, where they were dying from bad water, malaria and malnutrition.

You don’t need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.

The world spends $40 billion a year on pet food.

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.

Random violence is incredibly infectious.