UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced the divisions that have “paralyzed” the organization and expressed regret that the Security Council did not insist on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Sunday.
Speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar, Guterres claimed that the council was “paralyzed by geostrategic divisions” and that these divisions were impeding the development of solutions to the Israel-Hamas conflict, which broke out on October 7.
Two days after the US vetoed a resolution urging a ceasefire in Gaza, he said that the body’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined” by its delayed response to the conflict.
In the aftermath of two months of fighting that, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, claimed the lives of over 17,700 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, Guterres called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
Moreover, the secretary-general deployed the rarely-used Article 99 of the United Nations Charter to bring to the council’s attention “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”. It had been decades since a UN chief had used the rule.
Guterres shared his concern with the Doha Forum, stating: We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system.
He concluded: The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region.
