The world is entering an era of chaos, warns the UN

World “enters an era of chaos”UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned this Wednesday as he presented his work priorities for 2024 to the General Assembly.

Guterres described today’s world as “dangerous and unpredictable law of the jungle (where total impunity reigns)” with threats such as the inevitable climate crisis, unregulated artificial intelligence, unrepresentative international institutions and increasingly acute inequalities.

The Portuguese politician, now entering his eighth year at the helm of the organization, said the international system has two primary priorities: the reform of the UN Security Council, “which has never been so bad” because of its divisions, and that of the international financial institutions, whose is an “outdated, dysfunctional and unfair” design that “favors the rich countries that designed it”.

He remembered it this year half of humanity will go to the polls at a time when “more and more people are losing trust in institutions and faith in political processes”.

Depiction of deadly conflicts
Guterres reminded that armed conflicts in the world “have trapped millions of people whose life is a daily and mortal hell”, both for those who die and for those who flee the violence.

In this order, he cited Gaza, “a gangrenous wound in our collective conscience”; Ukraine; Sahel; the horn of Africa; Libya; Democratic Republic of Congo; Yemen; Burma, Haiti and the Balkans.

In all these places there are governments that “ignore and undermine the very foundations of multilateralism with zero accountability”, while the Security Council – the UN’s highest body – is mired in divisions.

Furthermore, divisions caused by hate speech, discrimination, extremism and human rights violations are deepening around the world, leading to authoritarianism, Islamophobia or anti-Semitism, as well as machismo and gender-based violence.

Poverty vs. Artificial Intelligence
He also reminded that developing countries are going through the bitterest five years in the last thirty years, and many of them “are facing record unpayable debt”.

A particularly dramatic fact illustrates this: the world’s poorest countries will owe more money in foreign debt at the end of the year than they will spend on health, healthcare and infrastructure combined.

In the meantime, Artificial Intelligence (AI) It is developing at full speed, but it is “concentrated on a few companies and even fewer countries”, and the truth is that “technology should reduce inequalities”, not reproduce them.

For this reason, he advocated that the international community move quickly and creatively to promote ethical minimums and protection systems that guarantee transparency and that artificial intelligence “remains under human control.”

The end of fossil fuels?
The Secretary General returned to one of his favorite topics, the climate crisis, and somewhat optimistically declared that “the era of fossil fuels is coming to an end” because, according to him, “the revolution of renewable energy sources is unstoppable.”

But in order to do that, he reminded that the global goal is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, which will require a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for 2030 compared to 2010, and that 2025 will be the last year of increase in this gas, and from then on it will decrease.

This will force every country to present a national climate plan, said Guterres, who at the end reminded that the responsibility is individual and collective and that he, for his part, will not stop in his fight for peace and the future. better for the future generation.