Antonio Guterres, Modi Discuss BRICS Priorities, Global Conflicts and AI Weapons

By Deepak Arora

NEW DELHI: With wars continuing in the Middle East and Ukraine, global food supplies under pressure and major questions hanging over the future of international cooperation, UN Secretary-General António Guterres met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit. The meeting brought together several of the most pressing issues facing the world, from reform of global institutions and freedom of navigation to food security, sustainable development, renewable energy and the rapidly growing role of artificial intelligence....more

Guterres Warns World’s Power Faultlines Are Turning Into ‘Canyons’

By Deepak Arora

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22: The world is drifting toward deeper division, widening inequality and conflicts that are increasingly escaping the restraints of international law, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned Tuesday, opening the General Assembly’s 81st session with an urgent call to reshape global institutions for a rapidly changing world.

“The faultlines in our world are widening. Cracks have become canyons,” Guterres told world leaders gathered in the General Assembly Hall.

He said the past decade had been marked by devastating wars, attacks on civilians, growing geopolitical divisions, worsening inequality and a climate crisis that had moved from a distant warning to a daily reality. At the same time, artificial intelligence has advanced at a pace that has “blindsided even those who created it,” he said.

Guterres argued that these crises are connected by one central issue: power, who has it, who is denied it and how it is used.

He said power is being reshaped in three major ways. New centres of economic, political and technological influence are emerging among states. At the same time, power is shifting away from governments toward a small number of private corporations and individuals whose influence now reaches politics, economies, information, technology and civic life.

The third shift, he said, is increasingly placing power in the hands of machines.

“Humans are increasingly handing power to machines,” Guterres said, pointing to artificial intelligence agents and the emergence of lethal autonomous weapons as military realities.

Yet global institutions, he warned, still largely reflect the power arrangements of a bygone era.

That mismatch, he said, is one of the defining challenges facing the international community.

Guterres said the world is moving toward multipolarity and that the shift is irreversible. But he warned that multipolarity could develop in very different directions.

One path could lead to fragmentation, rising mistrust, fractured markets and weakening international institutions. The alternative, he said, is a “networked multipolarity” based on economic, political, social and technological interdependence.

Such a system would allow multiple centres of influence to coexist under international law and shared rules, while avoiding both hegemonic domination and what he called the “Great Fracture,” a division of the world into two rival blocs with separate economic, technological and security systems.

Competition, Guterres said, will remain a permanent feature of international relations. But competition does not have to become confrontation.

He also cautioned major powers that their influence has limits.

“Military power alone cannot secure peace. Economic power alone cannot command stability. And technological power alone cannot guarantee security,” he said.

For that reason, he called for a stronger and more representative multilateral system centred on the United Nations, backed by the UN Charter, international law, human dignity and justice.

Guterres devoted a major part of his address to the conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar.

Across the Middle East, he said, so-called ceasefires had too often become little more than “lesser fires,” while civilians continued to pay the price.

“Enough is enough,” he said, urging leaders to use the high-level week for de-escalation and dialogue.

“The fighting must stop. Humanitarian aid must flow. And navigational rights and freedoms must be fully restored in accordance with international law,” he said.

On Gaza, Guterres said the devastation following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks had reached a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything he had witnessed during his tenure as Secretary-General.

He cited legally binding provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice and called on all parties to comply with international law and the Court’s orders. He also raised alarm over violence, displacement and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, warning that the two-state solution must not be allowed to disappear.

On Ukraine, he condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion as a violation of the UN Charter and said attacks on homes and critical infrastructure were threatening global food and energy supply chains.

In Sudan, he described a war driven by the struggle for power that has become a war against civilians, with millions displaced, hunger spreading and attacks on hospitals and homes. He also warned that Myanmar’s crisis was at risk of slipping from global attention.

Guterres again pressed for reform of the UN Security Council, saying the body must reflect the realities of the 21st century.

He singled out Africa, noting that when the UN was founded, much of the continent remained under colonial rule. Today, he said, Africa still has no permanent representation on the Council.

“A 21st century Security Council without permanent African seats is unjust and indefensible,” he declared.

He also turned to economic inequality, describing it not simply as an economic problem but as a question of power.

Billions of people, he said, still lack adequate food, clean water, education, decent work and healthcare despite unprecedented levels of global wealth, knowledge and technological capacity.

Guterres called for faster and fairer debt relief, stronger multilateral development banks and greater access to affordable financing for developing countries.

He ended this section with another fundamental imbalance, inequality between women and men.

Women and girls continue to face discrimination, violence and exclusion, he said, while their rights and freedoms are being rolled back in many parts of the world.

Yet he pointed to one achievement at the United Nations, saying the organization had reached gender parity for the first time in its history across senior leadership, headquarters and professional staff.

Guterres framed the challenges before world leaders as four tests of power: war and peace, wealth and inequality, climate change and the power unleashed by artificial intelligence.

How those tests are handled, he said, will determine whether the world moves deeper into division and instability or toward cooperation, justice and collective security.