Tag: Antonio Guterres

Guterres said he has no illusions about the obstacles to reforming the multilateral system…reports Asian Lite News

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday warned the world leaders, gathered for the annual high-level meeting, that the world is edging towards the unimaginable – a powder keg – which risks engulfing the world.

He said that the solutions to the crises require the reform of the international institutions, including the Security Council, and commitment to the UN Charter.

“Wars are raging with impunity. The nuclear threat has grown while inequality between nations and within nations and climate change are threatening the world order,” he said.

He added that the challenges are solvable which requires us to make sure the mechanisms of international problem-solving actually solve problems.

He listed reforming the Security Council as one of the steps that is needed. “Global inequalities are reflected and reinforced even in our own global institutions. The UNSC was designed by the victors of the Second World War,” he said.

He singled out Africa for reform as a victim of the structure set up when Africa was under colonial rule and had no permanent Security Council seat. “This must change,” he said.

He said he has no illusions about the obstacles to reforming the multilateral system.

“Those with political and economic power – and those who believe they have power – are always reluctant to change,” he said.

“Without reform, fragmentation is inevitable, and global institutions will become less legitimate, less credible, and less effective,” he warned. He said that the Gaza conflict is a non-stop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it.

He added that the Cold War had some rules, but today. ‘we are in a purgatory of polarity’ where the world has not reached a state of multi-polarity and ‘more and more countries are filling the spaces of geopolitical divides, doing whatever they want with no accountability.’ “It is time for a just peace based on the UN Charter, on international law and on UN resolutions,” he said.

The other threats to the world he listed were climate change and technology, artificial intelligence in particular, and economic inequality. He renewed his call for ending the use of fossil fuels and said developed nations should finance the transformation to renewables in the developing world.

“Without a global approach to its management, artificial intelligence could lead to artificial divisions across the board – a great fracture with two internets, two markets, two economies – with every country forced to pick a side, and enormous consequences for all,” he said.

He called for making the UN the centre of finding solutions through dialogue and consensus for cooperation on AI – based on the values of the Charter and international law.

To overcome inequalities, he said the developed countries had a responsibility to finance the sustainable development goals of the developing countries and increase multilateral financing for them.

Among other issues facing the world, he mentioned “rampant gender-based discrimination and abuse”.

“Every day, it seems we are confronted by yet more sickening cases of femicide, gender-based violence and mass rape, both in peacetime and as a weapon of war,” he said.

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Guterres says the multipolarity has created important opportunities for balance and justice for new leadership on the global stage…reports Asian Lite News

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said global politics is in a deadlock and does not work in favor of anyone. In his opening speech at the 60th Munich Security Conference on Friday, Guterres addressed diplomats around the world at a panel titled Growing the Pie: A Global Order That Works for Everyone.

“As the title of our discussion implies, today’s global order is not working for everyone. In fact, I will go further and say it’s not working for anyone. Our world is facing existential challenges, but the global community is more fragmented and divided than at any time during the past 75 years,” the UN chief said.

Guterres said there is no justification for the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 or Israel’s military response, which included collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

“The situation in Gaza is an appalling indictment of the deadlock in global relations. The level of death and destruction is shocking in itself, and the war is also spilling over borders across the region and affecting global trades.”

The UN chief said the humanitarian aid operation is no longer on life support in Gaza but is barely functioning.

“Humanitarians are working under unimaginable conditions, including live fire, multiple physical obstacles — and these are all restrictions — as well as the breakdown of public order.”

Commenting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vowing to carry out an extensive military offensive on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Guterres said the military action on the densely populated city should never take place.

“Rafah is at the core of the entire humanitarian aid operation. An all-out offensive on the city will be devastating for the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians there, who are already on the edge of survival.”

The UN chief reiterated his call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and a humanitarian cease-fire in the besieged enclave, saying: “That is the only way to massively scale up a delivery in Gaza. And this must be the foundation for concrete and reversible steps toward a two-state solution based on international law and UN resolutions.”

The UN chief later commented on the war in Ukraine, saying the cost of human lives is appalling.

“The war triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in clear violation of the UN Charter has no place in Europe of the 21st century. Two years in, the cost of human lives and suffering is appalling and the impact on the global economy has been particularly devastating for developing countries.

“We desperately need a just and sustained peace for Ukraine, for Russia and the world; but a peace in line with UN Charter and international law, which establishes the obligation to respect the territorial integrity of sovereign states.”

In his comparison of today’s “world order” to the previous eras, the UN chief said: “Even the Cold War era was in some ways less dangerous. The threat of nuclear war was real and existential. That’s why the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on arms reductions and controls and other mechanisms to prevent mutually assured destruction.”

“Today, in our multipolar worlds, we still face nuclear dangers and we are dealing with two more threats with existential dimensions, the climate crisis and the risks of uncontrolled artificial intelligence and we have been unable to take effective steps to respond to any of these existential challenges.”

Guterres says the multipolarity has created important opportunities for balance and justice for new leadership on the global stage.

“But the transition to multipolarity without strong global institutions can create chaos. When power relations are vague, the dangers of aggressive opportunism and miscalculation grow and today we see countries doing whatever they like, with no accountability. Impunity seems to be the name of the game. And so we must all be determined to reestablish the primacy of the rule of law.”

World leaders gather in Munich

Meanwhile, political leaders from some 40 nations will open the Munich Security Conference on Friday where US Vice President Kamala Harris, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are expected to speak.

The annual event, which is often called the “Davos for Defense,” will focus on the war in Ukraine and Western policy toward Russia, according to the organizers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to make the opening speech via videolink and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will be at the conference in person.

Earlier, Munich Security Conference’s chairman Christoph Heusgen said the official representatives of Russia are not invited so as “not to give them a platform for their propaganda.”

Germany’s Scholz is scheduled to deliver a speech Friday on Berlin’s new foreign and defense policy, followed by a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron on his foreign policy vision.

Harris and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will address the conference on Saturday on the issues of transatlantic security and cooperation.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis​​​​​​​ and British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among the participants.

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Guterres introduced last year the New Agenda for Peace with five major points to deal with problems of peace and development….reports Asian Lite News

Setting out his priorities for the year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reiterated his call to reform the Security Council to make it more representative in a multi-polar world that “is entering an age of chaos”.

Outlining the failures of the UN’s highest decision-making body, he said on Wednesday, “Indeed our world badly needs: Reform of the Security Council.”

In the New Agenda for Peace that he proposed for dealing with the challenges, “first and foremost, the United Nations Security Council must be able to take decisions and implement them, and it must become more representative,” he said in his address to the General Assembly on his priorities for the year.

In particular, he said that “it is totally unacceptable that the African continent is still waiting for a permanent seat” — a continent where most of the Council’s edicts on peace-keeping are focused.

Guterres introduced last year the New Agenda for Peace with five major points to deal with problems of peace and development.

In his critique of the Council, the UN Chief said, “The primary platform for questions of global peace is deadlocked by geopolitical fissures.” This is the “worst” it has been and “today’s dysfunction is deeper and more dangerous,” he warned.

In overhauling the Council, its “working methods must also be updated so that it can make progress — even when members are sharply divided,” he said.

In one to the efforts in this direction, France, a permanent member of the Council, and Mexico have proposed that the permanent members voluntarily not use their vetoes in cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and large-scale war crimes.

Mechanisms that were used to manage superpower relations during the Cold War are missing now, “and so our world is entering an age of chaos” creating “a dangerous and unpredictable ‘free-for-all’ with total impunity,” Guterres warned.

The polarised Council riven by rival vetoes of the permanent members from the East and the West, has been deadlocked on dealing with the many crises like the Ukraine War, the Hamas-Israel conflict and the Red Sea terrorism.

On a more positive note, he said that he sees “a truly dynamic effort to build a more effective, inclusive and renewed multilateralism tuned to the 21st century and our increasingly multipolar world”. Guterres also called for reforming the international financial system.

In a tour of the troubled horizon, he pointed to the conflicts in the Red Sea, Gaza, Ukraine, and numerous spots in Africa, the dictatorship in Myanmar, the “lawlessness” in Haiti, the ethnic tensions in the Balkans, the climate crisis and the backsliding in moving towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

He suggested solutions to these multifarious problems and appealed for international cooperation.

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