Guterres: ‘Cracks have become canyons’ as world faces four tests of power

Humanity faces four defining “tests of power” – around war or peace, inequality, climate change and AI – that will determine whether the world moves towards a new era of cooperation or deeper division, the UN chief warned the General Assembly on Tuesday.

Key points

• UN chief urges binding international cooperation on AI governance, warning that life-and-death decisions must never be handed to machines
• Calls for Security Council reform, highlighting the continued “indefensible” absence of permanent African representation
• For the first time in its history, UN has achieved full gender parity across senior leadership and staff 

With roughly 100 days remaining in his term as UN Secretary-General, António Guterres delivered a wide-ranging speech that framed the world’s most pressing crises not as isolated problems, but as different expressions of the same underlying struggle over how power is exercised and by whom.

“The greatest power is not the power to dominate. It is the power to build a future that works for everyone,” he said, presenting his annual report of the Organization.

Describing a decade of eroding international norms – from civilians targeted in war, and humanitarian workers killed, to international law “cast aside” and fraying trust between nations – he said power itself is being fundamentally reshaped in three ways:

• Emergence of new State powers
• Significant transfer of authority from governments to private corporations and individuals
• Growing role of AI and autonomous weapons in decisions once reserved for humans

“The faultlines in our world are widening,” he said. “Cracks have become canyons.”

Rather than accepting fragmentation as inevitable, he called for galvanizing cooperation and a truly global network built on interdependence and shared rules while warning against sliding into rival blocs with separate economic and security systems, a scenario he has termed in recent years the Great Fracture.

No real ceasefire in sight

Pointing to cascading crises across the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar, Mr. Guterres argued that so-called ceasefires have often amounted to little more than “lesser fires”, with civilians continuing to pay the price.

He renewed calls for compliance with International Court of Justice (ICJ) orders regarding Gaza and warned that settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank threatens to extinguish the two-State solution.

He also condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a clear violation of the UN Charter.

Renewing longstanding calls for Security Council reform, he singled out the continued absence of permanent African representation as “unjust and indefensible” given the 15-member organ’s founding in a starkly different geopolitical era.

‘Equality is not a dream; it is a decision’

Highlighting the gap between record global wealth and the billions still lacking access to food, clean water, education and healthcare, he said inequality is not merely an economic issue but a question of power over opportunity, resources and self-determination.

He reiterated his long-held view that the international financial system leaves developing nations crushed by debt while facing climate disasters they did little to cause. 

In this vein, he called for faster debt relief, bolder multilateral development banks and fairer access to Special Drawing Rights created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Devoting particular attention to gender inequality, he announced that the UN has achieved full gender parity across senior leadership, headquarters staff, and professional roles for the first time in its history.

“Equality is not a dream; it is a decision,” he said, citing progress at the UN as proof that entrenched power structures can change.

Twin challenges: Climate and AI

On climate change, Mr. Guterres said the crisis is the “most profound intergenerational power imbalance”, warning of a near-certain breach of the 1.5°C threshold.

Calling for polluters to “pay” and for developed nations to triple adaptation funding, he pointed out that major oil companies are reaping substantial profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while global adaptation finance for developing countries remains a fraction of that sum.

Turning to AI, the Secretary-General warned that power is increasingly concentrated in data, computing capacity and algorithms, advancing faster than humanity’s capacity to govern it.

“The danger is not technology,” he said. “The danger is technology without accountability.”

Outlaw killer robots

Guard rails on AI must be built, the UN chief said, adding that children must never become the test-subjects for unregulated systems.

“Life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines,” he warned. “Killer robots must have no place in our future.”

To address this, he called for a multilateral AI risk management framework with independent oversight, stating firmly that children must never become test subjects for unregulated systems and that life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines.

Stronger, not weaker

Mr. Guterres reaffirmed that peace, development and human rights are inseparable pillars of the UN Charter, rejecting any notion that dignity and rights can be divorced from security and opportunity.

In the face of global catastrophe more than 80 years ago on the battlefields of World War Two, the United Nations was created as an act of defiance of hope, of people who refuse to surrender the future to fear and of countries that know their futures are bound together.

Pledging to carry the “spirit of resolve” through his remaining time in office, he vowed to continue championing the UN Charter’s values, even after leaving his post as Secretary-General.

“The world does not need a weaker United Nations,” he said. “It needs a UN strong enough to face the world as it is and determined enough to build the world as it should be.”

This story was first published here