We celebrate today because there are women and men who have made it possible, - Hauwa Ibrahim

The future of human rights is optimistic. If I look back to fifty years ago, before the declaration of human rights, and look forward to what is happening now, it is true that we made progress. Humanity is dynamic and continuously changing, for example, the entertainment and advertising industry is totally changing our mindsets. I think that human rights laws are making a lot of work but the basic challenge should be NGOs, community-based organisations, inter-governmental agencies. We should not think about human rights in terms of what can we gain from them, but in terms of what we can give to them.

At one point in life, we are migrants or refugees, if not us, our great grand-parents. What is important is that everyone is treated with the dignity of a human person.

The powerful force that unite us is our human dignity... I beg you as we move on today and I urge you that we all have potential in us to ask ,to ask that we don't see the other person as the other but we are because they are,The concept of the other does not make us understand each other, so let's ask that we see the other person as we. That is one step that each of us can take, then we can seek peace but above all as the drum of war is now ringing let us knock at the door of peace".