International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

International Day In Support Of Victims Of Torture

The United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture – 26 June is held annually on 26 June to speak out against the crime of torture and to honour and support victims and survivors throughout the world.

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.

—Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

On this International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, we express our solidarity with, and support for, the hundreds of thousands of victims of torture and their family members throughout the world who endure such suffering. We also note the obligation of States not only to prevent torture but to provide all torture victims with effective and prompt redress, compensation and appropriate social, psychological, medical and other forms of rehabilitation. Both the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council have now strongly urged States to establish and support rehabilitation centres or facilities.

—United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon 2012

Read more about International Day In Support Of Victims Of Torture:  History, Global Campaign

Famous quotes containing the words day, support, victims and/or torture:

    ... possibly there is no needful occupation which is wholly unbeautiful. The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it—whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company all day, and who will make us feel, at evening, that the day was well worth its fatigues.
    Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)

    The interest in Wisdom is fading. Soon there will not be enough left to support the aphorism, even though it tries to amuse by half-mocking the Wisdom it propounds.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.
    Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)

    Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.
    Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)