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UN Secretary General
Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued yet another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for save our seas. The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization Monday issued reports on worsening sea level rise, turbocharged by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwestern Pacific is not only hurt by the rising oceans, but by other climate change effects of ocean acidification and marine heat waves. Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga and made his climate plea from Tonga's capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member countries are among those most imperiled by climate change. This is a crazy situation, Guterres said. Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity's making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no ..
The Taliban set unacceptable conditions for attending a UN-sponsored meeting about Afghanistan, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday. Taliban demands included the exclusion of Afghan civil society members from the talks in Doha, Qatar, and treatment that amounted to official recognition of the Taliban as the country's legitimate rulers, Guterres said at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in Qatar. The Taliban seized power in 2021, as US and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war. No country recognises them as Afghanistan's government, and the UN has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place. The two-day meeting in Doha brought together member states and special envoys. But the Taliban didn't attend because their demands had not been met. I received a letter (from the Taliban) with a set of conditions to be present in this meeting that were not acceptable, Guterres told a news conference. These .
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday paid tributes to the victims of the 26/11 terror attacks at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai on the first day of his three-day visit to India. Accompanied by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis, Guterres placed a foral wreath at the 26/11 attacks memorial in the hotel. It is the UN chief's first visit to India since his second term in office commenced in January. He had earlier visited the country in October 2018 during his first term at the top office. Guterres landed in Mumbai on Wednesday shortly after midnight via a commercial flight from London. He was greeted by senior Maharashtra government officials on arrival. He later drove to the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in south Mumbai, where he paid tributes to the victims of the 26/11 terror attacks. The Taj Mahal Palace hotel was one of the targets of the horrific 26/11 terror attacks in 2008. Guterres will deliver a public address at Indian .
The world's problems seized the spotlight Tuesday as the UN General Assembly's yearly meeting of world leaders opened with dire assessments of a planet beset by escalating crises and conflicts that an aging international order seems increasingly ill-equipped to tackle. After two years when many leaders weighed in by video because of the coronavirus pandemic, now presidents, premiers, monarchs and foreign ministers have gathered almost entirely in person for diplomacy's premier global event. But the tone is far from celebratory. Instead, it's the blare of a tense and worried world. We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction," Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, adding that our world is in peril - and paralysed. He and others pointed to conflicts ranging from Russia's six-month-old war in Ukraine to the decades-long dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. Speakers worried about a changing climate, spiking fuel prices, food shortages, economic inequality, migration, ..
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has nominated Abdoulaye Bathily to be the new UN envoy to Libya, and France's UN ambassador said he thinks the Security Council will approve the former Senegalese minister and UN diplomat, which would end a contentious nine-month search. The last UN special representative, Jan Kubis, resigned last November 23 after 10 months on the job, and a number of candidates proposed by Guterres were rejected by council members, Libya or neighboring countries. In December, Guterres appointed veteran American diplomat Stephanie Williams, a former UN deputy special representative in Libya, as his special adviser a job that did not require council approval. She left at the end of July. So, the mission has had no leader as Libyans grapple with a constitutional and political crisis. UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo warned Tuesday that failure to resolve Libya's political crisis and hold delayed elections poses a growing threat in the country, pointing to viole
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has demanded a halt to nuclear saber-rattling, saying the world is at a maximum moment of danger and all countries with nuclear weapons must make a commitment to no first-use. The UN chief on Monday told the Security Council that the commitment to dialogue and reason that led to the recent deal restarting grain and fertiliser shipments from Ukraine and Russia must be applied to the critical situation at Europe's largest nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, where continued shelling and fighting in the area has raised fears of a nuclear catastrophe. Saying humanity's future is in our hands today, Guterres urged all countries to recommit to a world free of nuclear weapons and to spare no effort to come to the negotiating table to ease tensions and end the nuclear arms race, once and for all. The secretary-general spoke at a council meeting organised by China, which holds the presidency this month, on promoting common securit