UN chief blasts growing global impunity, cites Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan conflicts

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced on Tuesday a growing number of governments and other groups who feel they are "entitled to a get out of jail free card," citing wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and Sudan.

"They can trample international law. They can violate the United Nations Charter," Guterres told world leaders at the UN General Assembly. "They can invade another country, lay waste to whole societies, or utterly disregard the welfare of their people. And nothing will happen."

"The level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable," he said.

With the nearly year-long war between Israel and Palestine in besieged Gaza threatening to now engulf Lebanon - where Israel targeted more than a thousand Hezbollah targets on Monday - Guterres made an impassioned plea.

"Lebanon is at the brink," he said. "The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world - cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza."

Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022 and the conflict has recently escalated with Kyiv rapidly seizing land in a high-risk August 6 incursion into Russia's Kursk region and Russia ramping up drone and missile attacks.

"Civilians are paying the price – in rising death tolls and shattered lives and communities," Guterres said, adding that it was time for a just peace based on the UN Charter, international law and UN resolutions.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, US, September 24, 2024. (Reuters)

On Sudan, Guterres called out the "brutal power struggle" between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that erupted into war in mid-April last year ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule.

"A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding as famine spreads. Yet outside powers continue to interfere with no unified approach to finding peace," he said.

Guterres' speech summed up the state of the world as unsustainable but said the challenges faced could be solved.

"Geo-political divisions keep deepening. The planet keeps heating. Wars rage with no clue how they will end. And nuclear posturing and new weapons cast a dark shadow," he said. "We are edging towards the unimaginable – a powder keg that risks engulfing the world."