Tag Archive for: Guterres

Path to peace ‘forged by dialogue and cooperation’ Guterres tells Security Council  |


Path to peace ‘forged by dialogue and cooperation’ Guterres tells Security Council 

Recommit to “dialogue, diplomacy and mutual trust”, Secretary-General António Guterres urged ambassadors in the UN Security Council on Monday, describing them as “the eternal tools of peace”. 

“The path to peace is forged by dialogue and cooperation,” and shaped by “a common understanding of the threats and challenges,” he said. 

On the ground in Ukraine 

Having just returned from Ukraine, Türkiye and Moldova, the UN chief recounted how he witnessed first-hand, the success so far of the Black Sea Initiative organized to ship grain and other vital food supplies for the rest of the world from Ukrainian ports, and noted another agreement for the unimpeded access of food and fertilizers from Russia, to global markets.  

“This comprehensive plan is crucial for the world’s most vulnerable people and countries, who are desperately counting on these food supplies,” he said, adding that “it is a concrete example of how dialogue and cooperation can deliver hope, even in the midst of conflict”. 

The top UN official called for “the same commitment to dialogue and results” at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, currently under Russian military control, reaffirming the UN’s logistics and security capacities to support a mission by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from Kyiv to Europe’s largest nuclear power facility. 

Divides, conflicts, instability 

From military coups to inter-State conflicts, invasions, and “wars that stretch on” for years, today’s collective security system is being “tested like never before,” Mr. Guterres spelled out. 

He drew attention to lingering differences between the world’s great powers, including at the Council, which continue to limit a collective response; humanitarian assistance that is stretched to the breaking point; human rights under assault; and a lack of trust. 

“Many of the systems established decades ago are now facing challenges that were unimaginable to our predecessors – cyberwarfare, terrorism, and lethal autonomous weapons,” observed the UN chief. “And the nuclear risk has…

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Estonia to Push the Security Council to Recommend UN’s Guterres to a Second Term


Eva-Maria Liimets, Estonia’s foreign minister since January 2021. Women also hold the posts of president and prime minister in the country, a current rarity in the world. RENEE ALTROV/ESTONIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICE

The small Baltic country of Estonia is ready to boost the prospects of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres winning a second term as the country holds its last Security Council presidency in June during its current elected term.

“It will be very nice for us to do it,” Sven Jurgenson, Estonia’s ambassador to the UN, told PassBlue, adding, “and for me personally because during the last elections five years ago, Estonia together with Costa Rica had a lead in the ACT [Accountability, Coherence and Transparency] group on the selection process of secretary-general.” In 2016, Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal and head of the UN refugee agency for 10 years, was elected as the UN’s top leader for the 2017-2021 term.

Jurgenson added that “it would be rewarding to me also to see that the next selection will also happen during my watch, when I’m in the Council.”

As part of the overall process, the Council must recommend a candidate to the UN General Assembly for a vote. Guterres, the only officially recognized candidate, is likely to be re-elected, and Estonia wants to make sure the 193-member Assembly carries out the vote this summer.

In early May, after what many countries called a successful public dialogue with UN member states and a few members of civil society in a discussion hosted by the General Assembly president, Guterres’s second term became a fait accompli, to the great disappointment of numerous self-declared candidates who were hoping to be taken seriously and push the process to be even more transparent than it was in 2016, when a bold new experiment occurred.

None of the candidates, however, had a national endorsement, which translated into their not being acknowledged officially by the respective presidents of the General Assembly and the Security Council. A handful of the candidates are still campaigning through informal means, and last week, a new person threw his hat in the ring, Patrick U. Petit, a 52-year-old…

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