Antonio Guterres took the reins of the UN on New Year’s Day, promising to be a “bridge-builder,” but facing an antagonistic incoming administration led by US president-elect Donald Trump who thinks the world body’s 193 member states do nothing except talk and have a good time.
The former Portuguese prime minister and UN refugee chief told reporters after being sworn in as secretary-general on Dec. 12 that he would engage all governments, “and, of course, also with the next government of the United States” and that he would show his willingness to cooperate on “the enormous challenges that we’ll be facing together.”
However, Trump has shown little interest in multilateralism, which Guterres said is “the cornerstone” of the UN, and a great attachment to the Republicans Party’s “America First” agenda.
Immediately after the US allowed the UN Security Council to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank on Dec. 23 in a stunning rupture with past practice, Trump said on Twitter: “As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20th” — the day he takes office.
Trump followed up three days later with another tweet questioning its effectiveness.
He wrote: “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!”
In the first minute after taking over as UN chief yesterday, Guterres issued an “appeal for peace.”
He urged all people in the world to make a shared New Year’s resolution: “Let us resolve to put peace first.”
“Let us make 2017 a year in which we all — citizens, governments, leaders — strive to overcome our differences,” he said.
Guterres has said there is enormous difficulty in solving conflicts, a lack of “capacity” in the international community to prevent conflicts, and the need to develop “the diplomacy for peace,” which he plans to focus on.
He has also said he will strive to deal with the inequalities that globalization and technological progress have helped deepen, creating joblessness and despair especially among young people.
“Today’s paradox is that despite greater connectivity, societies are becoming more fragmented. More and more people live within their own bubbles, unable to appreciate their links with the whole human family,” he said after his swearing-in.
Guterres said the values enshrined in the UN Charter that should define the world that today’s children inherit — peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance and solidarity — are threatened, “most often by fear.”
“Our duty to the peoples we serve is to work together to move from fear of each other, to trust in each other, trust in the values that bind us, and trust in the institutions that serve and protect us,” he said. “My contribution to the United Nations will be aimed at inspiring that trust.”
“It’s not just to have a personal agenda, because it would be regrettable or ineffective, or to appear in the limelight. No. On the contrary, it’s to act with humility to try to create the conditions for member states that are the crucial actors in any process to be able to come together and to overcome their differences,” he said.
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