The world’s fault lines have turned from cracks into canyons as superpowers show that they alone do not have the military, economic, and technological power to guarantee security or solve the world’s problems, the outgoing secretary-general of the United Nations said in his final address to the General Assembly.
In a speech laced with despair but also glimpses of defiant hope, António Guterres said that over the last decade, largely spanning his 10-year period in office, “wars erupted with devastating consequences and dragged on with despicable cruelty. Civilians were targeted. Human rights trampled. Hunger weaponised. Humanitarians killed. International law cast aside.”
He continued: “Geopolitical divides have deepened. Inequalities have intensified. Trust has frayed. The climate crisis went from distant warning to daily reality. And artificial intelligence moved at a speed that has blindsided even those who created it.”
On Gaza and Ukraine
Without naming Israel, Guterres said what followed the Hamas attack of October 2023 “was an onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I have witnessed in all my years as secretary general.”
He urged world leaders to stop letting civilians pay the price for cascading conflicts across the Middle East. Demanding that the fighting must stop and humanitarian aid must flow, he pointed out that the International Court of Justice had ordered last year that the UN be allowed to fulfil its mandates in Gaza.
“Meanwhile violence, displacement and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank are bulldozing the path to peace and raising the spectre of ethnic cleansing. We cannot allow the two-state solution to disappear before our eyes,” he said.
In Ukraine, Guterres said, “Russia’s full-scale invasion has subjected a sovereign country to a brutal war in blatant violation of the charter.” But he also warned that “in parts of Russia, homes, energy and water systems and transport have come under repeated attack, threatening food and energy supply chains globally.”
On Climate and Corporate Power
Guterres rounded on profiteering energy companies for “treating the world as an open sewer.” He said:
“Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, five major Western oil companies have pocketed nearly half a trillion dollars in profits. Compare that with just $34 billion in international public adaptation finance for developing countries in the latest year reported.”
He warned that “with a supersized El Niño coming towards humanity, everyday people are paying more for energy, food and insurance.”
He also highlighted what he called “an extraordinary transfer of power away from governments to a handful of private corporations and individuals.” Their reach, he said, “now extends across politics, economies, information flows, technological development, and the civic space on which societies depend.”
On AI and Superpower Limits
Guterres called for a new compact to regulate AI. “Humans are increasingly handing over power to machines – with artificial intelligence agents going rogue, and lethal autonomous weapons going from science fiction to military reality,” he said.
Without mentioning Donald Trump once, he said what was required was “a recognition, especially by superpowers, that their power isn’t so super. Their power has limits. The events of recent years have made that unmistakably clear. Military power alone cannot secure peace. Economic power alone cannot command stability. And technological power alone cannot guarantee security.”
He warned against the “great fracture” — the division of the world into two rival blocs with separate economic, technological, and security systems. “At the very moment when humanity faces an unprecedented convergence of threats, our mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain,” he said.
On Africa and the UN
Guterres described Africa’s omission from a permanent place on the UN Security Council as “stunning” and “unjust and indefensible.” He defended the cash-strapped and much-maligned organisation, saying the UN was where the powerful were held to account.
He announced that the United Nations had “achieved gender parity for the first time in history across all senior leadership … all headquarters … and all professional staff.”
“Equality is not a dream. It is a decision,” he said. “If the UN can change, so can businesses, parliaments, governments, peace processes.”
The Bottom Line
In his final General Assembly address, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that superpowers cannot solve the world’s problems alone. He condemned the war in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and profiteering energy companies. He called for a new compact to regulate AI and warned against the world fracturing into rival blocs. He described Africa’s exclusion from a permanent Security Council seat as “unjust and indefensible.” The choice, he said, is whether power will be exercised with the law or beyond it.
My opinion
Guterres did not name Donald Trump. He did not need to. The message was clear: the era of superpower dominance is over. The United States cannot police the world alone. Russia cannot bully its neighbors into submission. China cannot buy stability. The old rules no longer apply. The new ones have not been written.
Guterres spent 10 years warning about climate change, inequality, and the erosion of international law. He watched the world fracture into rival blocs. He watched corporations accumulate more power than governments. He watched AI move faster than anyone could regulate. He watched Gaza burn and Ukraine bleed. And he never stopped believing that multilateralism was the only answer.
Was he right? The evidence is mixed. The UN has been criticized for decades as a talking shop, a forum for autocrats, a bureaucracy that cannot stop a war. Guterres knows this. He defended it anyway, saying the UN is where the powerful are held to account. That is an optimistic view of an institution that has often failed to hold anyone accountable.
But here is what Guterres did not say: the alternative to imperfect multilateralism is not perfect isolationism. It is chaos. The world is too interconnected to solve problems alone. Climate change does not respect borders. Pandemics do not need visas. AI does not care about passports. Guterres is leaving office with a warning, not a solution. It is now up to the rest of the world to decide whether to listen.
