UNITED NATIONS (AP) — With global peace and progress under siege, the United Nations chief challenged world leaders Tuesday to choose a future where the rule of law triumphs over raw power and where nations come together rather than scramble for self-interests.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the U.N.’s founders faced the same questions 80 years ago, but he told today’s world leaders at the opening of their annual gathering at the General Assembly that the choice of peace or war, law or lawlessness, cooperation or conflict, is “more urgent, more intertwined, more unforgiving.”
“We have entered in an age of reckless disruption and relentless human suffering,” he said in his annual “state of the World” speech. “The pillars of peace and progress are buckling under the weight of impunity, inequality and indifference.”
But despite all the internal and external challenges facing the U.N., he and General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock pleaded with its members not to give up. “If we stop doing the right things, evil will prevail,” Baerbock said in her opening remarks.
Guterres said the leaders’ first obligation is to choose peace, and without naming any countries, he urged all parties — including those in the Assembly chamber – to stop supporting Sudan’s warring parties.
He also didn’t name Israel but used his strongest words against its actions in Gaza, saying the scale of death and destruction are the worst in his nearly nine years as secretary-general, and that “nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
While Guterres has repeatedly said only a court can determine whether Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, he referred to the case South Africa brought to the U.N.’s highest court under the genocide convention by name – and stressed its legally binding provisional measures, first and foremost to protect Palestinian civilians.
Since the International Court of Justice issued that ruling in January 2024, Guterres said, killings have intensified, and famine has been declared in parts of Gaza. He said the court’s measures “must be implemented – fully and immediately.”
The U.N. also is facing financial cuts as the U.S. and some other nations pulled back funding or have yet to pay their dues. Guterres said aid cuts are “wreaking havoc,” calling them “a death sentence for many.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, in one of the gathering’s most closely watched speeches, said he felt the U.N. has “tremendous potential” but isn’t coming close to fulfilling it.
The U.S. president’s “America First” credo has always been a tricky fit with the U.N.’s commitment to global-scale shared decision-making. Returning to the Assembly rostrum five years after he last addressed the gathering by video during the coronavirus pandemic, Trump also touted his own foreign policy moves and told his peers that “your countries are going to hell” because of “uncontrolled migration.
UN Chief Warns World Leaders of ‘An Age of Reckless Disruption and Relentless Human Suffering’
