Antonio Guterres says UN Security Council deadlocked over geopolitical differences
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Wednesday that the world was entering an “era of chaos” with a deeply divided Security Council unable to resolve key issues such as Israel’s war with Hamas.
As the Gaza war entered its fifth month on Wednesday, Antonio Guterres warned that if Israeli armed forces advanced on the southern city of Rafah, it would “multiply what is already a humanitarian nightmare and bring untold consequences.” regional consequences”.
On October 7, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack, and the Israeli army launched a ruthless bombing and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in an effort to destroy the organization, displacing more than one million people southward.
“Now is the time for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the unconditional release of all hostages,” Antonio Guterres said in a speech to the General Assembly outlining his priorities for 2024.
In his speech, he called for reform of the Security Council and the international financial system, among other changes, and declared his “Future Summit” in September to address dysfunction that was “more serious and more dangerous” than ever before. Key places.
Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres said: “The United Nations Security Council – the main forum for global peace issues – is deadlocked by geopolitical differences.”
“This is not the first time the Security Council has been divided, but it is the most serious. Today’s dysfunction is even more serious and dangerous.”
Unlike the Cold War, when “well-established mechanisms helped manage superpower relations,” he said, those mechanisms are missing “in today’s multipolar world.”
He warned: “Our world is entering an era of chaos… a dangerous and unpredictable free-for-all and total impunity.”
His comments come amid devastating conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, the Middle East and elsewhere, with millions displaced by fighting and in need of aid.
“As conflicts surge, global humanitarian needs are at an all-time high, but funding is not keeping up,” António Guterres said.
Against such a dark backdrop, Antonio Guterres encouraged world leaders to seize the opportunity of the Future Summit to be held during the annual General Assembly in New York in September to “shape multilateralism in the coming years.”
He reiterated his call for the development of an “urgent platform to improve the international community’s response to complex global shocks” in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Antonio Guterres, who has made combating climate change a priority since taking office in 2017, reiterated that the crisis “remains the defining challenge of our time” and called on humanity to “live at peace with the planet”.
He said: “Humanity has waged a war that we can only lose: our war against nature. It is a crazy battle.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
