UN chief to world leaders: U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders Tuesday that the state of the world is unsustainable.
“We can’t go on like this,” he said at the start of the U.N. General Assembly annual debate.
He said there is a level of impunity felt by some governments that is “politically indefensible and morally intolerable.”
Citing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and conflicts across the Horn of Africa and beyond, Guterres scolded violators for trampling international law and the United Nations Charter and causing untold suffering.
“They can invade another country, lay waste to whole societies, or utterly disregard the welfare of their own people,” he said. “And nothing will happen.”
He expressed particular concern about the escalating situation between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah.
“We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink,” he warned. “The people of Lebanon — the people of Israel and the people of the world — cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”
Guterres also expressed concern about climate change, human rights, development challenges and the need to reform aging international institutions, including the United Nations.
Wars to dominate
Leaders addressing the first day of the nearly weeklong meeting are likely to raise the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and along the Israel-Lebanon border.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Tuesday as his administration navigates supporting Ukraine in its battle against Russia’s invasion and attempts to bring calm to the Middle East.
Also on the schedule is Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose country has played a key role as a distribution point for aid donations to neighboring Ukraine.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose nation has seen the conflict play out just over its border and shot down Iranian drones headed for Israel earlier this year, will be one of the day’s first speakers.
Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, whose government is a key interlocutor in U.S., Egyptian and Qatari efforts to negotiate a cease-fire deal for Gaza, will also speak.
Tuesday’s schedule also includes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Vietnamese President To Lam, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
“In Gaza and the West Bank, we are witnessing one of the greatest humanitarian crises in recent history, which is now spreading dangerously to Lebanon," Lula told the General Assembly. "What began as a terrorist action by fanatics against innocent Israeli civilians has become a collective punishment for the entire Palestinian people."
Of the 194 speakers this week, among them 76 heads of state and 42 prime ministers, only 19 are women. Guterres told the assembly that despite years of talk about gender equality, this is “unacceptable.”
The annual meetings always draw numerous leaders, diplomats, officials and international press. Security is tight. Outside the building, New York police tightly secured the area around the United Nations, and city traffic was rerouted away from the complex.
U.S. Secret Service and diplomatic security agents were inside the U.N. complex escorting individual leaders. The U.N. said Monday that more than 11,600 people had entered the complex for meetings.