UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
As the United Nations General Assembly convened for its 78th session, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged world leaders to restructure multilateral institutions such as the Security Council and international financial architecture in light of current economic and political realities.
“Global governance is stuck in time. Look no further than the United Nations Security Council and the Bretton Woods system. They reflect the political and economic realities of 1945,” Guterres said on Tuesday. The world has changed. Our institutions have not. We cannot effectively address problems as they are if institutions don’t reflect the world as it is,” he told the world’s biggest diplomatic gathering at UN headquarters in New York.
He warned that the world is on the verge of a ”Great Fracture” in its economic and financial systems, and that trade relations with geopolitical tensions are deteriorating. ”Further fragmentation is the alternative to reform. ”It’s either reform or rupture,” he added.
“Despite our long list of global challenges, that same spirit of determination can guide us forward. Let us be determined to heal divisions and forge peace,” said Guterres.
Guterres also described a flood that killed thousands in Derna, Libya, as a metaphor of the world’s troubles.
“Even as we speak now, bodies are washing ashore from the same Mediterranean Sea where billionaires sunbathe on their super yachts, Derna is a sad snapshot of the state of our world – the flood of inequity, of injustice, of inability to confront the challenges in our midst.” Said the United Nations secretary general.
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