Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 38
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday denounced a growing number of governments and other groups who feel they are “entitled to a get out of jail free card,” citing wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and Sudan.
“They can trample international law. They can violate the United Nations Charter,” Guterres told world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
With the nearly year-long Israeli offensive in the besieged Gaza threatening to now engulf Lebanon – where Israel targeted more than a thousand Hezbollah targets on Monday – Guterres made an impassioned plea.
“Lebanon is at the brink,” he said. “The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world – cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”
Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022 and the conflict has recently escalated with Kyiv rapidly seizing land in a high-risk August 6 incursion into Russia’s Kursk region and Russia ramping up drone and missile attacks.
On Sudan, Guterres called out the “brutal power struggle” between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that erupted into war in mid-April last year ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule.
“A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding as famine spreads. Yet outside powers continue to interfere with no unified approach to finding peace,” he said.
Guterres’ speech summed up the state of the world as unsustainable, but said the challenges faced could be solved.
Source: Reuters
