Barack Obama lauds people's will for rights from Delhi to Warsaw

US President Barack Obama Wednesday lauded the will of the people from Delhi to Warsaw who used the "moral force of non-violence" to demand their universal rights and pried open the "humiliating grip of corruption and tyranny."

"This year has been a time of transformation. More nations have stepped forward to maintain international peace and security. And more individuals are claiming their universal right to live in freedom and dignity," Obama said in his speech to the UN General Assembly in United Nations.

Noting that the world today stood "at a crossroads of history," Obama said the youth revolution from Egypt to Libya is delivering a "powerful rebuke to dictatorship, and rejecting the lie that some races, religions and ethnicities do not desire democracy."

"We saw in those protesters the moral force of non-violence that has lit the world from Delhi to Warsaw; from Selma to South Afric and we knew that change had come to Egypt and to the Arab World."

He said the world today is a different one from a year ago, when the prospect of a successful referendum in South Sudan was in doubt, people of Libya were ruled by the world's longest serving dictator, hopes of the people of Tunisia were suppressed and Egypt had known one President for nearly thirty years.

The way things have been is not the way they will be.

The humiliating grip of corruption and tyranny is being pried open. Technology is putting power in the hands of the people," he said.