Anna Tibaijuka

"As we all know, the problems of inadequate shelter, health care, education, poverty and unemployment among young people can lead them all too easily into crime. Ignoring their plight thus carries tremendous social and economic costs."

"When the UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, visited this city on his first official mission on taking office, he provided a personal donation of 100,000 US dollars of seed money to help launch in 2008 what is today known as the Moonbeam Youth Training Centre – a centre for young people without the resources or skills to lift themselves out of poverty."

"Youth training to improve employment prospects and entrepreneurship requires attention by governments as well as the private sector."

"True, in 2002 I was elected by the UN General Assembly as under-secretary general of the United Nations and executive director of UN-HABITAT. I therefore became the first African woman in this senior elective position. In 2006 I was also appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the director general of the United Nations Office in Nairobi, which is the only UN headquarters station in the developing world. Once I got into both these positions, I considered it my duty to work hard and perform highly and impressively to demonstrate that African women, given a chance, can also deliver. I am happy that on this matter all are agreed I did very well."

"Actually I don’t care about those people because either they are not informed or have their own ulterior motives! Most of this stuff is misinformation and outright propaganda. First, there is no adverse audit query for UN-HABITAT. On the contrary, we achieved an outstanding financial performance, including from our fundraising events. I had inherited a bankrupt organization in 2002. I built it up from scratch."

"Well, that experience forced me out of the comfort zone and reminded me I was still an African woman who must fight any injustice for the sake of those coming after me. I am happy I emerged victorious and will go down in history in having helped formalise the status of the Nairobi duty station after it had existed informally for over 40 years, without [there being] an independent position of an under-secretarygeneral to function as a leader created by the General Assembly. In other words, before my struggle, the position of an independent director general for the Nairobi duty station did not exist."

"I believe that one cannot solve the problems that one does not fully understand.This is why I decided to take the UN secretary general to see real life in the slums.The outcome was that he gave a personal grant for UN-HABITAT to work in the slums of Kenya, as part of the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme that I had initiated with the government of Kenya when I first arrived in 2000."