Young people - with their dynamism, their energy and their inherent understanding of our interconnected world - have much to teach us. Increased educational attainment, advances in technology and the spread of information have made this generation the best educated, most connected and most informed in history

The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode . . . .

Under international law, the responsibility for protecting civilians in conflict falls on the belligerents. Under military occupation, responsibility for the welfare of the population falls on the occupiers.

We need to ensure the poorest in the planet - who will be hardest hit by the financial crisis - are not forgotten.

Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.

Let us, above all, be clear that, without a convincing program of debt relief to start the new millennium, our objective of halving world poverty by 2015 will be only a pipe dream.

I am not afraid to dream. You first have to start with a dream. Build your castles in the air and give it foundation. Without a dream, you are not going to get anywhere.