You cannot ignore 50% of your nation and think that your country is going to grow.
Interpretation
Inclusion is crucial for national growth and development.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and including all segments of society in order to achieve collective progress. Ignoring half of the population, particularly marginalized groups, not only undermines social justice but also hinders economic and cultural advancements, thereby stunting the growth of the entire nation.
In practice
During a conference on national policy, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for inclusive governance.
Throughout my career, from Jamaica to Nigeria, Pakistan to Switzerland, I've learned that effective diplomacy means more than shaking hands and staging photo ops. It means developing real, robust relationships. It means finding common ground and managing points of differentiation. It means doing genuine, old-fashioned, people-to-people diplomacy.
The fact that I made it to where I made it, when I look at where I came, I think is a message to the world and it's also a message to other young people who come from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds, that where they come from does not necessarily have to define where they are going.
Those of us who experience racism cannot, and should not, internalize it, despite the impact that it can have on our everyday lives. We must face it down, every time, no matter whom it's directed towards.
I think countries are now, leaders are now more conscious of the importance of having women engage in their country's development plan. Because again, and I say this over and over and over again, when we invest in women they invest back in their families, they invest in their communities, and they invest in their countries.
The more we elevate people's lives - the more we treat people with dignity and respect and honor their rights and freedoms - the more we discourageand even preventterrorism.
It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia, and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.
The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.
You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
My world has changed, and so have I. I have learned to choose and I have learned to say goodbye.
I miss my pre-Internet brain, but that doesn't help anything. We can only go forward.
A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.
Going abroad to study as a teenager, and joining the United Nations at 22, confirmed my ease with the world of the frequent flyer. I saw the average airport terminal as a familiar haven, like a friend's sitting room. But 9/11 changed all that.
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