(United Nations) “Our world is entering an era of chaos,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm on Wednesday, deploring the unprecedented divisions of the Security Council incapable of acting in the face of “terrible conflicts” which multiply.
“Governments are ignoring and undermining the very principles of multilateralism, without accountability. The Security Council, the main tool for world peace, is in an impasse due to geopolitical fissures,” he said, presenting his priorities for 2024 to the General Assembly.
“This is not the first time the Council has been divided. But it’s the worst. The current dysfunction is deeper and more dangerous. »
Thus, “during the Cold War, well-established mechanisms helped manage relations between superpowers,” he noted. But “in today’s multipolar world, such mechanisms are absent. Our world is entering an era of chaos.”
And “we see the results: a dangerous and unpredictable free-for-all, with total impunity,” denounced the Secretary General, worrying about new nuclear proliferation and the development of “new means of killing each other and for humanity to annihilate itself.
“There is so much anger and hatred and noise in the world today. Every day, and at the slightest opportunity, it seems like war. Terrible conflicts that are killing and maiming civilians at record levels. Wars of words. Turf wars. Culture wars.”
Focusing specifically on the conflict between Israel and Hamas, he warned of a possible Israeli ground assault in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crowded into the southern Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt.
“Such action would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare, with incalculable regional consequences,” he insisted, once again calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and the release of all hostages. .
From Gaza to Ukraine, from Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Yemen to Burma, “alongside the proliferation of conflicts, global humanitarian needs are at a record level, but funding is not keeping up,” he said. he lamented again.
In this context, Antonio Guterres encouraged governments around the world to seize the opportunity of the “Future Summit” which will take place in September in New York on the sidelines of the General Assembly to “shape multilateralism for the years that are coming “.
Among the changes “that the world really needs”, he repeated his call for major reforms of the Security Council, the international financial system, and the establishment of an “emergency tool to improve international responses to complex global shocks” such as the COVID-19 pandemic.