GNV News, 23 September 2026

On September 22, 2026, the General Debate of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly began at United Nations Headquarters in New York, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a speech. As Guterres’s term will end in late 2026, this was his final speech in a UN General Assembly General Debate.

When Guterres took office as UN Secretary-General about 10 years ago in 2017, the first message he sent to the world was “peace.” On January 1, 2017, the first day of his tenure, he released an “Appeal for Peace,” in which he asked, “How can we help the millions of people who are trapped in endless wars and suffering enormously?” He called on the world to “make peace our priority.” Guterres’s message at that time was that the international community must work together to reduce the humanitarian damage caused by war, prevent conflicts before they erupt, and build peace through dialogue and political solutions.

In his final speech in 2026, nearly 10 years later, Guterres said that “the fault lines of our world are widening. The cracks have become canyons.” Regarding the problems the world is currently facing, he framed four issues—war and peace, inequality, climate change, and AI—as a “test of power.” This reflects not only Guterres’s own thinking, but also changes in the environment surrounding the United Nations.

In June 2026, at a meeting marking the 81st anniversary of the UN Charter, Guterres said in a speech that the United Nations is “far from perfect, but irreplaceable.” At the same time, he stressed the need to strengthen multilateralism through UN reform. Looking back further, in his final Annual Priorities Address in January 2026, Guterres described the current situation as “a world of conflict, impunity, inequality, and unpredictability,” and pointed out a “paradox of our times”: just when international cooperation is most needed, countries’ willingness to engage in such cooperation is weakening.

In his speech at the General Debate, while noting that the rifts in the world are widening, Guterres concluded by saying, “The world does not need a weaker United Nations. It needs a United Nations strong enough to face today’s world and build the world as it should be.”

Learn more about the United Nations → “Challenges Facing the UN-Led Humanitarian Aid System”

                                                     →“United Nations: A Crisis Caused by Funding Shortfalls”

                                                     → “United Nations: Funding Cuts Forcing ‘Choices of Survival’”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres (Photo: Alan Santos / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 2.0])