UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleaded for “a world built on interdependence” as he made his final address Tuesday to the General Assembly gathering of world leaders.
The UN leader has long implored leaders not to give up on cooperation and shared decision-making in the face of accelerating global challenges and increasing great-powers competition. Tuesday's message took on additional urgency because he leaves office at the end of this year.
“The fault lines in our world are widening,” he said, citing raging wars, rising temperatures and artificial intelligence, among other matters. Instead of letting the future continue to veer toward fragmentation, transactionalism and mistrust, he called for “a world built on interdependence – and sustained by a dense web of economic, political, social and technological connections.”
His speech opened the main portion of the world's biggest diplomatic meeting of the year. Leaders from the UN's 193 member countries address each other and the international community and air their hopes, plans and grievances.
Guterres also rebuked might-makes-right thinking, telling superpowers to recognise “that their power isn't so super.” Recent years have made it clear that “military power alone cannot secure peace,” he said.
The annual high-level gathering at the UN General Assembly will be consumed with wars in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and Myanmar and a persisting question: Can the leaders do anything to end them?
And what can they do about the relentless rise of global warming threatening the future of the planet, the growing inequalities within and among nations, and shocks to the global economy as blocked shipping routes and supply chains increase the cost of living and slow growth?
Behind the scenes, there will be speculation about who will lead the United Nations next. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' second five-year term ends December 31 and no clear successor has emerged.
