World leaders gathered for an annual high-level meeting were told yesterday by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the world is edging toward the unimaginable - an increasingly volatile powder keg that could engulf the world.
He said that solutions require the reform of international institutions, including the Security Council, and commitment to the Charter of the United Nations.
He said that wars are raging with impunity, the nuclear threat has grown, and inequality between nations and within nations and climate change are threatening the world order.
He said the challenges are solvable which requires us to make sure the mechanisms of international problem-solving actually solve problems.
He says reforming the Security Council is 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.
"Unless reform takes place, fragmentation is inevitable and global institutions will become less legitimate, less credible, and less effective," he said.
He described the Gaza conflict as a non-stop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it.
But he concedes the Cold War did have some rules, whereas today 'we are in a purgatory of polarity' where the world has not reached the 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 the world faces, he enumerated, were climate and technology - artificial intelligence in particular - and economic inequality.
He again called for a stop to the use of fossil fuels, saying that developed nations should finance the transformation to renewables in the developing world.
Without a global approach to its management, artificial intelligence could lead to an artificial division 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.
He said the developed countries had a responsibility to finance the sustainable development goals of the developing countries and increase multilateral financing for them to overcome inequalities.
Among other issues facing the world, he mentioned "rampant gender-based discrimination and abuse."
"As if it were not enough to be crying everyday due to the fate of millions of women subjected to femicide, gender-based violence, and mass rape, in peacetime and in war," he said.
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