Success Quote by Jan Egeland

“Remarkably effective and successful” is the kind of upbeat sentence you hear when someone needs two audiences to believe two different things at once: taxpayers and donors want proof their money wasn’t wasted, while policymakers want a moral reason to stay engaged. Jan Egeland, a career humanitarian official, writes in the confidence-man register of institutional optimism, but the mechanics are bureaucratic: declare measurable progress, emphasize thrift, then open the door to expansion.

The subtext sits in the pivot between “very small resources” and “we can now do even more.” “Small resources” is not humility so much as leverage. It frames Somalia as a place where marginal inputs produce outsized returns, a classic aid narrative designed to counter “aid fatigue” and the suspicion that fragile states are black holes for money. It also quietly relocates responsibility: if a “large group of people” achieved success with limited means, then any failure to scale up would look like political choice rather than logistical constraint.

Context matters because Somalia has long been shorthand for both humanitarian catastrophe and international embarrassment, especially for Western publics who remember intervention as a cautionary tale. Egeland’s phrasing tries to rehabilitate the idea of engagement by shifting from military quagmire to technocratic competence. Notice what’s absent: local actors, governance, security, the risk of dependency. Success is narrated as an external “we,” a coalition that helps - efficient, disciplined, morally solvent. The line sells an interventionist posture without sounding like ideology: just practical people doing what works, and asking, politely, for the mandate to keep going.