UN’s Guterres urges global solutions as volatile world inches closer to ‘powder keg’

Presenting the 2024 report on the work of the United Nations to the general debate, Mr. Guterres speak World leaders gathered amid ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere, along with growing uncertainty over climate change, poverty and AI.

“Our world is in turmoil. We are in an era of great transformation – facing challenges unlike any we have ever seen – challenges that require global solutions,” the UN chief said.

Geopolitical divisions are deepening, global temperatures are rising, wars are raging – with no end in sight, and nuclear moves and new weapons are “casting a shadow”, he warned.

“We are approaching the unimaginable – a powder keg that threatens to engulf the world,” he said.

The two most important facts

Mr Guterres told the heads of state and government attending that he stood before them with two “most important truths”:

“First, the state of our world is unsustainable – we cannot continue like this. And second, the challenges we face are solvable – but that requires us to ensure that international problem-solving mechanisms actually solve the problems.”

While Summit of the Futuretakes place ahead of the annual summit week and sees UN member states agree on a forward-looking statement called the Treaty for the future “This is a first step,” the Secretary-General stressed, “we have a long way to go.”

To achieve that, three main drivers of unsustainability need to be addressed:

• A lawless world – where violations and abuses threaten the foundations of international law and the United Nations Charter.
• An unequal world – where injustice and inequality threaten to weaken nations or even push them to the brink.
• And an uncertain world – where unmanaged global risks threaten our future in unforeseeable ways.

“These worlds of lawlessness, inequality and instability are interrelated and colliding,” Mr. Guterres said, adding that the level of lawlessness was politically untenable and morally unacceptable, and there were those who felt they could trample on international law, violating it. United Nations Charterand invade other countries but get “impunity from prison”.