U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United Nations leader warned Monday (February 23, 2026) that “the rule of force” was spreading, as the powerful trample on international law and wield artificial intelligence and other technologies to attack human rights.

“Human rights are under a full-scale attack around the world,” Antonio Guterres told the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s annual session in Geneva. “The rule of law is being outmuscled by the rule of force.”

The U.N. secretary-general stressed that “this assault is not coming from the shadows, or by surprise. It is happening in plain sight and often led by those who hold the greatest power”.

He did not mention specific situations, although he did voice outrage at Russia’s war in Ukraine, where he said more than 15,000 civilians had been killed in four years of violence. “It is more than past time to end the bloodshed,” he said. Mr. Guterres also highlighted the “blatant violations of human rights, human dignity and international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

He charged that the trajectory in the conflict-torn territories under Israeli occupation was “stark, clear and purposeful: the two-state solution is being stripped away in broad daylight”. “The international community cannot allow it to happen,” he insisted.

Rights attacked ‘deliberately, strategically

In his final in-person address to the U.N.’s top rights body, Mr. Guterres said the worst conflict-hit areas were not the only places where rights were eroding. “Around the world, human rights are being pushed back deliberately, strategically and sometimes proudly,” he said.

“We are living in a world where mass suffering is excused away, where humans are used as bargaining chips, where international law is treated as a mere inconvenience.” U.N. rights chief Volker Turk echoed the concerns.

In a “deeply worrying trend”, he warned that “domination and supremacy are making a comeback”. “A fierce competition for power, control, and resources is playing out on the world stage at a rate and intensity unseen for the past 80 years,” he warned.

“The use of force to resolve disputes between and within countries is becoming normalised.” Mr. Turk highlighted how “the gears of global power are shifting”, calling for people to band together to protect rights and create “a strong counterbalance to the top-down, autocratic trends we see today”.

‘Democracies eroding’

While the U.N. says that conflicts are multiplying, impunity is spreading, and humanitarian needs are exploding, its traditional top donor, Washington, has dramatically slashed its foreign aid spending since President Donald Trump returned to power last year. Other major donors have followed.

“When human rights fall, everything else tumbles,” Mr. Guterres warned. The crisis of respect for human rights “mirrors and magnifies every other global fracture”, he said, pointing out that “inequalities are widening at staggering speed.

At the same time, “climate chaos is accelerating, and technology, especially artificial intelligence, is increasingly being used in ways that suppress rights, deepen inequality and expose marginalised people to new forms of discrimination both online and offline”, he warned.

Mr. Turk, meanwhile, lambasted leaders, without naming them, who seem to believe “that they are above the law, and above the U.N. Charter”.

“They claim exceptional status, exceptional danger or exceptional moral judgement to pursue their own agenda at any cost,” he said, pointing to how “some weaponise their economic leverage”. “They spread disinformation to distract, silence and marginalise,” he charged.

What is clear, Mr. Guterres warned, was that “across every front, those who are already vulnerable are being pushed further to the margins”. “Democracies eroding, migrants harassed, arrested, and expelled with total disregard for their human rights and their humanity. Refugees scapegoated,” he pointed out, also highlighting how “LGBTIQ+ communities [are] vilified, minorities and indigenous peoples targeted, religious communities attacked”.

Mr. Guterres, who is to step down this year after a decade at the U.N. helm, called for urgent action to reverse the trend. “Do not let power write a new rulebook in which the vulnerable have no rights and the powerful have no limits,” he said.

Published – February 23, 2026 10:34 pm IST

India’s permanent contribution to the agenda of the international community and that of the United Nations (U.N.) is of “enormous importance for us”, the U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has said, as he pointed to a “positive mega trend” of the increasingly enhanced roles of developing economies such as India in the world.

These remarks were made by Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who will be heading to New Delhi to attend the India AI Impact Summit, the first-ever summit on Artificial Intelligence hosted in the Global South.

India AI Summit 2026 Day 2 LIVE updates: Summit aims to capture use of AI for public interest, PM Modi says

“India became an extremely important leader in the discussions on all aspects of the activities of the U.N., in peace and security, sustainable development, where I remember the G20 presided by India, the very important decisions that were taken there,” Mr. Guterres told PTI in an exclusive interview here.

“And also in human rights as a democratic country in a world where, unfortunately, we see democracy in trouble in so many parts of the world,” Mr. Guterres said.

To a question on India’s role at the U.N., Mr. Guterres said “first of all, we have a huge debt of gratitude to India” for its presence in U.N. Peacekeeping, noting that currently about 5,000 Indian women and men are deployed in peacekeeping missions across the world.

He also highlighted the “first entirely female police unit in peacekeeping” from India, which he described as “something remarkable”, given that gender equality is a “fundamental objective” for the U.N.

India, which has traditionally been among the largest troop contributors to U.N. Peacekeeping, was the first country to deploy the all-women Formed Police Unit to Liberia in 2007, a landmark in the global organisation’s history.

“This permanent contribution of India to the agenda of the international community, which is the agenda of the U.N., is of enormous importance for us,” Mr. Guterres said in the interview ahead of his visit to India.

Mr. Guterres, whose tenure as the U.N. chief will end this year, highlighted some “positive mega trends” emerging in the world at a time of growing conflicts and increasing inequalities.

“My message is that there are many reasons to be, of course, worried. We have seen conflicts multiplying, injustices, inequalities increasing, poverty and hunger not being solved in the world. We have seen terrorism developing and becoming a nightmare in different parts of the world. So there are many reasons to be worried but there are a few positive mega trends,” he said.

Mr. Guterres stressed that one of the “most important mega trends” has to do with the role of countries and economies such as India.

“Every single day, the group of developed countries — G7 and similar countries — they represent a smaller share of the global economy than the day before. And every single day, the emerging economies, in which India is a fundamental pillar, represent a larger share of the world economy than the day before,” he said.

“And this happens every single day, which means that this mega trend will, in time, contribute to a world in which justice, equality, and based on justice, equality, peace will have much more conditions to prevail,” he said.

Mr. Guterres has previously emphasised that global structures and institutions must reflect the complexity and opportunity of these “new times and realities”.

Against this backdrop, he has called for reform of the U.N. Security Council but noted that it is important to distinguish the powerful 15-nation organ from the rest of the United Nations.

“The U.N. is not the Security Council,” he said, adding that the U.N. is fully represented in the 193-member General Assembly, where all states have the same weight.

“Of course, it’s the fact that the Security Council has not only been unfair in its composition but ineffective in its action. That facilitates some easy criticism of the United Nations.” He voiced full support for the U.N., underscoring that he is proud of the work the world organisation does.

“I’m extremely proud of the extraordinary work that the United Nations is doing in humanitarian aid around the world, in support of sustainable development around the world, in leading the extremely important campaign for climate action and in developing more and more new areas in relation to what we were doing traditionally,” he said.

“The United Nations has been a strong ally of developing countries fighting for reform of the international financial architecture to make sure that developing countries have a much stronger participation and voice in the international financial institutions,” he said.

“I am very proud to work with the U.N. and very proud of my colleagues who do humanitarian aid in the most remote and dangerous areas of the world, and very proud of the peacekeepers, like the Indian peacekeepers, that protect people in very difficult circumstances, also in some very dangerous situations,” he said.

Asserting that the U.N. plays a “very important and positive role”, he said “our brand of the Sustainable Development Goals became a universal brand that all countries, and India has been leading in this dimension, are pursuing with determination.”

Mr. Guterres is scheduled to participate in the Summit’s opening ceremony, a plenary with Heads of State and Government, as well as a session on the role of science in international AI governance, his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.

Mr. Guterres will have bilateral meetings with President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will meet with global and tech leaders attending the Summit, as well as with members of the International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence.

Head of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Balaraman Ravindran, is among a global group of 40 distinguished experts named by Mr. Guterres to serve on the panel.

Mr. Guterres is also scheduled to take part in a roundtable organised by the U.N. to discuss renewable energy and energy transition.

“With India emerging as a global leader in renewable energy expansion, the discussion will bring together senior figures from industry, finance, policy and civil society to identify concrete steps to further accelerate renewable energy deployment, strengthen grids and storage, and mobilise investment at scale. This engagement is part of the Secretary-General’s continued efforts to advance a faster, fairer and more inclusive global energy transition, aligned with the Paris Agreement,” Mr. Dujarric said.

A file image of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends the opening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) plenary session, in Belem, Brazil, November 6, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

World leaders begin convening Monday (September 22, 2025) at one of the most volatile moments in the United Nations’ 80-year history, and the challenges they face are as dire as ever if not more so: unyielding wars in Gaza and Ukraine, escalating changes in the U.S. approach to the world, hungry people everywhere and technologies that are advancing faster than the understanding of how to manage them.

The United Nations itself, which emerged from World War II’s rubble on the premise that nations would work together to tackle political, social and financial issues, is in crisis itself.

As Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week: “International cooperation is straining under pressures unseen in our lifetimes.”

Yet the annual high-level gathering at the U.N. General Assembly will bring Presidents, Prime Ministers and monarchs from about 150 of the 193 U.N. member nations to UN headquarters.

The secretary-general says it is an opportunity that can’t be missed — even in the most challenging of moments.

“We are gathering in turbulent — even uncharted — waters,” Mr. Guterres said. He pointed to, among other spectres, “our planet overheating, new technologies racing ahead without guardrails, inequalities widening by the hour.”

They gather for a better world, but can they build it?

Mr. Guterres said he will use the more than 150 one-on-one meetings he has with leaders and ministers to urge that they speak to each other, bridge divides, reduce risks and find solutions — to conflicts, to keep the planet from increased warming, to put guardrails on fast-expanding artificial intelligence, and to find funding for lagging UN goals for 2030 including ending poverty in all countries and ensuring quality education for every child.

He said leaders must make progress, not merely engage in “posturing and promises”.

But U.N. watchers say that in a deeply polarised world, with no prospects of ceasefires in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, whether the high-level meeting makes any progress remains a big question mark.

Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, said he is confident three topics will dominate high-level week – US President Donald Trump’s first appearance in his second term, the horrific situation in Gaza, and what’s next for the United Nations as it grapples with major funding and staff cuts, mainly due to the cutoff in US payments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets.

Mr. Gowan said he expects the nearly two-year war in Gaza to be the central issue, as Israel launches a major offensive in Gaza City forcing thousands to flee and following a report by independent experts commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council that accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel rejected the allegation, calling the report “distorted and false”.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, has stressed that “Palestine is going to be the huge elephant in this session of the General Assembly”.

It will be front and centre on Monday (September 22, 2025) at a high-level meeting co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia on implementing a two-state solution to the nearly eight-decade Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And the spotlight will be even brighter because the Trump administration refused to give a US visa to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to speak at that meeting and the General Assembly.

On Friday (September 19, 2025) , the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution enabling Mr. Abbas to speak by video — as it did in 2022 for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following Russia’s invasion. This year Mr. Zelenskyy will be attending in person, and the Security Council is expected to meet on Ukraine on Tuesday (September 23, 2025).

The assembly voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to support a two-state solution and urge Israel to commit to a Palestinian state. Hours before that vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “there will be no Palestinian state”.

More than 145 countries already recognise Palestine as a state, and Mansour told The Associated Press on Sunday that “it’s going to be 10 more” announcing their recognition at Monday afternoon’s meeting. High-level week is also expected to see a Security Council meeting on Gaza, possibly Tuesday afternoon.

Lots of thorny issues are on the docket

The high-level meeting starts Tuesday (September 23, 2025) morning in the vast General Assembly chamber. Mr. Trump will speak that day shortly after Mr. Guterres’ opening “state of the world” speech.

Gowan said there is “hope” that Trump will come in a positive mood, touting the international accomplishments that the president says merit the Nobel Peace Prize. Also on the docket: Trump’s financial approach to the larger world.

“Obviously, most leaders are going to be focusing on what he has to say about tariffs,” Gowan said, but also about Russia and China.

Other speakers to watch are interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, making his debut on the international stage following the ouster of former strongman Bashar Assad in December, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Iranian leader will be in New York days after the Security Council decided not to permanently lift UN sanctions on his country over its escalating nuclear programme, but it gave Tehran and key European powers France, Germany and the United Kingdom until midnight Sept 27 to agree to a delay. That’s when the sanctions will automatically “snapback” unless a deal is reached.

High-level week will also see numerous meetings on tackling climate change; on the more than two-year war in Sudan started by rival military and paramilitary generals that has sparked the world’s worst displacement crisis; on Somalia, which is home to the extremist group Al-Shabab; and on Haiti, where gangs control over 90% of the capital and have expanded into the countryside.

An event on Monday (September 22, 2025) will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Beijing women’s conference, which adopted a platform to achieve gender equality. The United Nations says that goal is growing more distant and Guterres has said it is 300 years away on the current track.

One of Mr. Guterres’ major aims this year: to generate support for his plans to reform the United Nations and make it more responsive to the world as it is in 2025.

Because of funding cuts by the US and others, the UN announced last week that its regular operating budget for 2026 needs to be cut by 15% to $3,2 billion along with a 19% cut in that budget’s staff positions. — 2,681 posts.

Mr. Gowan said he doesn’t see the United States or other countries running away from the United Nations. But he stressed that it is going through “an extraordinarily difficult period” and will have to shrink and change.

“The U.N.’s resonance on peace and security issues is unquestionably not what it was,” he said, “but I think that the organisation will continue to muddle through.”

Published – September 22, 2025 11:04 am IST

A cargo ship sails towards the Bridge of the Americas, which spans the entrance to the Panama Canal, after newly sworn-in U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks during his inauguration speech, when he vowed that the United States would take back the canal, in Panama City, Panama January 22, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Panama has complained to the United Nations over U.S. President Donald Trump’s “worrying” threat to seize the Panama Canal, even as it launched an audit of the Hong Kong-linked operator of two ports on the interoceanic waterway.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the government in Panama City referred to an article of the U.N. Charter precluding any member from “the threat or use of force” against the territorial integrity or political independence of another.

The missive, distributed to reporters on Tuesday (January 21, 2025), urges Mr. Guterres to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council, without asking for a meeting to be convened.

Mr. Trump, in his inaugural address Monday, repeated his complaint that China was effectively “operating” the Panama Canal through its growing presence around the waterway, which the United States handed over at the end of 1999.

“We didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And we’re taking it back,” Mr. Trump said.

Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino hit back that the canal was not a gift from the United States during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“We reject in its entirety everything that Mr Trump has said. First because it is false and second because the Panama Canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong to Panama,” Mr. Mulino said on Wednesday (January 22, 2025).

The President has previously denied that any other nation was interfering in the canal, which he said was operated on a principle of neutrality.

Asked on Wednesday (January 22, 2025) about the spat, Beijing denied it had ever “interfered” in the canal.

“China has always respected Panama’s sovereignty over the canal and recognized the canal as a permanent neutral international waterway,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.

U.S. pressure

The Panamanian comptroller’s office that oversees public entities announced “an exhaustive audit” would be launched “aimed at ensuring the efficient and transparent use of public resources” at the Panama Ports Company.

The company, part of Hutchison Ports, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings, operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal on either end of the canal.

The comptroller’s office said the aim was to determine whether the company was complying with its concession agreements, including adequate reporting of income, payments and contributions to the state.

Hutchison Ports PPC said in a statement that it has “maintained and will continue to maintain a transparent and collaborative relationship” with Panamanian authorities.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to comply with all laws and regulations, fully exercising our contractual responsibilities,” the firm said.

“Our financial results, audited by an independent external auditor, have been shared annually with our partner, the Panamanian State, ensuring trust and clarity in our management.”

Mr. Trump has been raising pressure for weeks over the canal, through which 40% of U.S. container traffic travels. He has refused to rule out using military force to reclaim it.

The Panama Ports Company’s concession agreement was extended by 25 years in 2021.

The United States is the canal’s main user, followed by China.

Since 2000, the waterway has contributed more than $30 billion to Panama’s state coffers, including nearly $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year.

Paris:

The world is nowhere near ready for the “calamity” being caused by climate change and must urgently prepare for even worse in the future, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Thursday.

Global efforts to adapt to climate change — from building defensive sea walls to planting drought-resistant crops — have not kept pace as global warming accelerates the frequency and intensity of disasters.

Floods, fires and other climate shocks have affected nearly every continent in a year the EU climate monitor says is almost certain to be the hottest ever recorded.

The amount of money going to poorer countries for adaptation measures was barely one-tenth of what they needed to disaster-proof their vulnerable economies, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a new assessment looking at 2022, the latest year for which data is available.

“Climate calamity is the new reality. And we’re not keeping up,” said Guterres at the launch of UNEP’s annual Adaptation Gap Report.

Rich nations are under pressure at this month’s UN COP29 summit to substantially increase the $100 billion they pledged for climate action in developing countries, including for adaptation.

But some donor governments are under fiscal and political pressure, and major new commitments of public money are not expected at the conference in Azerbaijan.

A UN biodiversity meeting this month failed to reach a funding agreement and the election of Donald Trump — who opposes global climate cooperation — hangs over COP29.

No one immune

Most of the public money committed to climate change goes to reducing planet-warming emissions, not adapting to its long-term consequences.

Some $28 billion in public finance was paid to developing countries for climate adaptation in 2022.

This was an increase on the year prior, but still a drop in the ocean: UNEP estimates between $215 billion and $387 billion is needed annually for adaptation in developing countries.

Rich countries had pledged to double the amount by 2025 to roughly $40 billion a year but even this would leave an “extremely large” adaptation funding gap, UNEP said.

Climate disasters hit poorest communities hardest but the cost of inaction was no longer borne by them alone, said Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation.

“From rising seas and extreme heat waves to relentless droughts and floods, the impacts of climate change now reach every corner of the globe. No nation, no community is immune,” he said in a statement.

Spanish authorities were accused of being inadequately prepared when a major storm brought flooding that killed over 200 people last month.

Climate scientists say that global warming is fuelling more frequent and severe extreme weather.

“We can’t postpone protection. We must adapt — now,” Guterres said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

United Nations:

Lebanon is “on the verge of an all-out war”, but there is still time to stop, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said.

Speaking to reporters at the UN headquarters in New York, Guterres said on Tuesday that the Middle East “is a powder keg with many parties holding the match”.

“I have warned for months of the risks of the conflict spreading,” said the UN chief, adding that the situation in the occupied West Bank is “boiling over,” and attacks in Lebanon are threatening the entire region.

He said that over the last few days, exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and others in Lebanon and the Israel Defense Forces have intensified across the Blue Line, in total disregard of Security Council resolutions 1701 and 1559, Xinhua news agency reported.

Guterres noted that large-scale Israeli strikes deep into Lebanon, including Beirut, have killed more than 2,000 people over the last year — and 1,500 in just the past two weeks alone, and attacks by Hezbollah and others south of the Blue Line have killed at least 49 people over the last year. In addition, Lebanese authorities report over 1 million people have been displaced in Lebanon, and 300,000 people have fled into Syria, while over 60,000 people remain displaced from northern Israel.

“We are on the verge of an all-out war in Lebanon, with already devastating consequences. But there is still time to stop,” he said.

“The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected,” he stressed.

The secretary-general commended the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, for continuing “to carry out their mandates to the extent possible,” and called on all actors to ensure their safety and security.

Guterres said the past year “has been a year of crises — humanitarian crisis, political crisis, diplomatic crisis, and a moral crisis,” and “the nightmare in Gaza is now entering an atrocious, abominable second year.”

Over the last year, following the attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023, “Gaza has become ground zero to a level of human suffering that is hard to fathom,” with over 41,000 Palestinians reportedly killed, mostly women and children, and thousands more missing, he said.

“Virtually the entire population has been displaced — and no part of Gaza has been spared,” said Guterres. “No place is safe in Gaza and no one is safe.”

He underscored that international law is unambiguous: “Civilians everywhere must be respected and protected, and their essential needs must be met, including through humanitarian assistance,” and strongly condemned all violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

The UN chief reiterated the calls for an immediate ceasefire both in Gaza and Lebanon, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages, and immediate lifesaving aid to all those who desperately need it, and the calls for irreversible action for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)