Our world is in big trouble, says UN chief Guterres
Darpan News Desk IANS, 20 Sep, 2022 01:17 PM
United Nations, Sep 20 (IANS) "Our world is in big trouble".
With those explosive words, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on Tuesday listing the crisis upon crisis piled upon the world.
He listed them: war, conflicts, climate change, hunger, financial crises, challenges of runaway technology developments, hate speech, global divisions and inequalities, and massive human rights violations.
"The United Nations Charter and the ideals it represents are in jeopardy," he said. "And yet we are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction".
In the midst of the gloomy prognosis, Guterres projected on the giant screens at the General Assembly chamber the image of a ship navigating the troubled waters of the Black Sea.
It was the ship, Brave Commander, carrying food grains from Ukraine to Africa and he called it "an image of promise and hope" in "the hell of war".
"At its essence, this ship is a symbol of what the world can accomplish when we act together," he said, mentioning the diplomatic efforts of the UN, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey for ships with foodgrains to break through the stalemate at the UN in dealing with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"In truth, it is multilateral diplomacy in action", he said.
Assembly President Csaba Korisi echoed Guterres's alarm at the global situation and also the hope.
Korosi said: "A landmark agreement on commercial grain exports from the world's breadbasket offers hope. Diplomacy is at work to release fertilisers so that the shortages we see today do not become the famines of next year."
"It has been 203 days since the General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning the military aggression against Ukraine. Unfortunately, the bloodshed and the suffering have not stopped yet," he said.
Decrying the paralysing polarisation of the geopolitical divides, Guterres warned that the world was descending into chaos with not even two groups.
He said, "At one stage, international relations seemed to be moving toward a G-2 world; now we risk ending up with G-nothing. No cooperation. No dialogue. No collective problem-solving."
"We need a coalition of the world," he said.
On global warming, he said, "We have a rendezvous with climate disaster."
He called for ending use of fossil fuels and imposing punitive taxes on energy companies that market fossil fuels.
Calling for adoption of non-fossil fuels, he said: "Developing countries need help to make this shift, including through international coalitions to support just energy transitions in key emerging economies."
Korosi also spoke about the imminent dangers from climate change.
Calling the floods in Pakistan a "window on the future", he said: "Once this high-level week is over, I plan to launch a series of consultations with the scientific community, asking them to help us."
On the dangers of technology, Guterres said: "Our data is being bought and sold to influence our behaviour - while spyware and surveillance are out of control - all, with no regard for privacy."
He warned, "Artificial intelligence is compromising the integrity of information systems, the media, and indeed democracy itself. Quantum computing could destroy cybersecurity and increase the risk of malfunctions to complex systems."
And yet, he said, there are not even the beginnings of a framework to deal with these issues.
Matthew Rycroft, the senior-most civil servant at the Home Office, reportedly informed him that he and another officer who had been short-listed for the job that they would not be selected. He is not known to have spelled out a reason for the decision.
Soon after the aircraft went out of contact, the Nepal Army deployed its personnel in the Lete area for search. The plane was carrying 13 Nepalese, four Indians, and two Germans.
In a public session on Monday, WHO's Dr. Rosamund Lewis said it was critical to emphasize that the vast majority of cases being seen in dozens of countries globally are in gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men, so that scientists can further study the issue and for those at risk to be careful.
The incident commander who was on scene during the 45 minutes it took for tactical officers to storm a bullet-strewn classroom in Uvalde, Tex., on Tuesday made the "wrong decision" to wait, the head of the state's Department of Public Safety acknowledged.
The gunman entered the school at about 11:40 a.m. local time through an apparently unlocked door, and contrary to initial reports, encountered no resistance, Escalon said — the armed school safety officer, normally a fixture at educational facilities around the U.S., was not there.
Act 1 came Tuesday, when an 18-year-old gunman, armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, killed 19 pre-teen children and two teachers in a fourth-grade classroom before dying himself at the hands of law enforcement.
