Guterres: ‘Cracks have become canyons’ as world faces four tests of power

Humanity faces four defining “tests of power” – around war or peace, inequality, climate change and AI – that will determine whether the world moves towards a new era of cooperation or deeper division, the UN chief warned the General Assembly on Tuesday.Key pointsUN chief urges binding international cooperation on AI governance, warning that life-and-death decisions must never be handed to machinesCalls for Security Council reform, highlighting the continued “indefensible” absence of permanent African representationFor the first time in its history, UN has achieved full gender parity across senior leadership and staff With roughly 100 days remaining in his term as UN Secretary-General, António Guterres delivered a wide-ranging speech that framed the world’s most pressing crises not as isolated problems, but as different expressions of the same underlying struggle over how power is exercised and by whom.“The greatest power is not the power to dominate. It is the power to build a future that works for everyone,” he said, presenting his annual report of the Organization.Describing a decade of eroding international norms – from civilians targeted in war, and humanitarian workers killed...