Climate change...is, simply, the greatest collective challenge we face as a human family.

Millions of our fellow human beings continue to live as contemporary slaves, victims of abominable practices like human trafficking, forced labour and sexual exploitation. Countless children are forced to become soldiers, work in sweat shops or are sold by desperate families. Women are brutalized and traded like commodities. Entire households and villages labour under debt bondage.

We must turn the greatest collective challenge facing humankind today – climate change – into the greatest opportunity for common progress towards a sustainable future.

On this International Day, let us promise to make peace not just a priority, but a passion. Let us pledge to do more, wherever we are in whatever way we can, to make every day a day of peace.

Today, we have more than 110,000 men and women deployed in conflict zones around the world. They come from nearly 120 countries ... Thanks to their efforts, life-saving humanitarian assistance can be delivered and economic development can begin.

People everywhere look to the United States to use its remarkable power to help lift humanity up and to work for the common good.

We must unite. Violence against women cannot be tolerated, in any form, in any context, in any circumstance, by any political leader or by any government.