The UN Secretary pointed out that growing divisions could deepen into a dangerous ‘abyss.’
During his speech at his final General Assembly before leaving office, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recalled that an advisory opinion in “the case of Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip” made clear that the United Nations must be able to fulfill its mandate in the area.
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“All parties must respect international law and the orders of the Court,” he said, referring to the case against Israel filed by South Africa before the ICC in December 2023.
The Portuguese diplomat, however, avoided calling Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide, despite the fact that reports by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, openly state that Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza.
“Israel’s violence, displacement and expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank are destroying the path to peace and raising the specter of ethnic cleansing… We cannot allow the two-state solution to disappear before our eyes,” Guterres said, highlighting the Israeli army’s offensive against Palestinians in Gaza, which has resulted in a level of killing and destruction “unprecedented” during his years in office.
At the previous General Assembly, a majority of countries backed the New York Declaration to promote the coexistence of a Palestinian state and an Israeli state. The Palestinian delegation, led by its representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour, applauded Guterres’ remarks, while the Israeli delegation remained silent.
The Donald Trump administration did not grant visas to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and officials from his government to participate in the General Assembly’s general debate.
In his final UN General Assembly address as secretary-general, Antonio Guterres condemned the killing and destruction in Gaza and warned that Israeli settlement expansion and displacement in the occupied West Bank are “raising the spectre of ethnic cleansing”.…
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A World Divided into Two Blocs Creates Risks
UN Secretary Guterres warned of the risk of a “great fracture” occurring globally and the world being divided into two opposing blocs with independent economic, technological and security systems. He also lamented that the divisions among hostile countries are widening and threatening to become “an abyss.”
The Portuguese diplomat said the world is heading toward a multipolar system, but it can do so either through fragmentation and confrontation or through interdependence, which would prevent a global rupture.
The path of fragmentation, which he defined as “the trajectory we are following” for the most part today, is based on growing tensions, distrust, and relations without international cooperation, while the path of interdependence entails a world sustained by a network of alliances with international law at its center.
“Building that future begins by recognizing, especially on the part of the superpowers, that their power is not so super. Their power has limits. The events of recent years have made that unequivocally clear,” he said.
Guterres warned that the future will be shaped by how humanity confronts “the crisis of power,” which is formed by the convergence of factors such as the predominance of war over peace, the concentration of wealth, global environmental problems, and risks stemming from artificial intelligence.
The UN Secretary urged an end to conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan, defended the right of all nations to develop with equal opportunities, advocated for a national plan to move away from fossil fuels, and called for establishing a framework of common conditions for the implementation of AI to address the risks it may pose.
“I will maintain that spirit of firmness and determination throughout each of the 100 days I have left in office,” Guterres said, adding that peace is possible, human dignity is universal, and it is worth “fighting for our common future.”
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
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