This is a day on which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable. This is an occasion for the world to speak up against the unspeakable. It is long overdue that a day be dedicated to remembering and supporting the many victims and survivors of torture around the world.

Can the state, which represents the whole of society and has the duty of protecting society, fulfill that duty by lowering itself to the level of the murderer, and treating him as he treated others? The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process.

Beneath the surface of states and nations, ideas and language, lies the fate of individual human beings in need. Answering their needs will be the mission of the United Nations in the century to come.

If the United Nations is not as united as it should be, that is because it is a reflection of the world we live in.

My own advice to people who would be in office for two or three terms is that they must accept democratic rotation. Ideally not put themselves up for re-election and allow the system to work.

We need to think of the future and the planet we are going to leave to our children and their children.

Yehudi Menuhin was a citizen of the world in the fullest sense - one whose vision and culture gave him a deep empathy with fellow human beings of every creed and color.