Guterres uses final UNGA address to press for Security Council reform

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday used his final address to the high-level UN General Assembly debate to urge world leaders to reform the Security Council, saying it must reflect today’s world and have the legitimacy and effectiveness needed to deal with current geopolitical challenges.

Addressing the opening of the General Debate at the 81st session of the General Assembly, Guterres delivered one of his strongest calls yet for change in the 15-member body. His second five-year term as UN chief ends in December 2026, making this his final high-level UNGA week as Secretary-General.

“We must also reform the Security Council so that it reflects today’s world with the legitimacy and effectiveness that today’s challenges demand,” Guterres told world leaders. He said the Council was designed in the aftermath of World War II, but “the world has fundamentally changed since then. A change that is far from reflected in the Security Council.”

He said Africa was the “most stunning example” of that gap. “When the UN was founded, most of Africa was still under colonial rule. Today, Africa still has no permanent seat on the Council. A 21st-century Security Council without permanent African representation is unjust and indefensible. This must change,” he said, drawing applause in the General Assembly hall.

After his nearly 35-minute address, Guterres received a standing ovation from world leaders, foreign ministers, ambassadors, diplomats and senior UN officials as he left the podium. He also said, “Our institutions and systems of global governance continue to reflect the power realities and interests of a largely bygone age. That is the defining challenge before us. At the very moment when humanity faces an unprecedented convergence of threats, our mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain.”

His remarks came at a time when the Security Council remains deeply divided and polarised, with sharp differences among its five permanent veto-wielding members — China, France, Russia, the UK and the US — and has struggled to stop conflicts and carry out its responsibility to maintain international peace and security. India has long pushed for reform of the Council, including expansion in both permanent and non-permanent categories, arguing that the body created in 1945 is not fit for purpose in the 21st century and does not reflect current geopolitical realities. India has also said it deserves a permanent seat and is contesting for a non-permanent seat for the 2028-29 term, with elections due in June next year.

Guterres said the international community was facing deeper geopolitical divides, greater inequality and frayed trust. “The climate crisis went from distant warning to daily reality. And artificial intelligence moved at a speed that has blindsided even those who created it. These are not separate crises. They are chapters of the same story. The story of power. Who has it. Who is denied it. How it is used. And how it is changing,” he said.

He said new centres of economic, political and technological influence had emerged, while humans were increasingly handing over power to machines, yet global institutions still reflected old power structures. “We are clearly moving towards a multipolar world. And that movement is irreversible,” he said, while warning that multipolarity could take different forms. One possibility, he said, was “a world of fragmentation and transactionalism. A world of rising tensions and deepening mistrust. Of fractured markets and weakened institutions. Of shrinking cooperation and zero-sum calculations. In many respects, that is the trajectory we are on today.”

He also set out what he called another path — “networked multipolarity”. Describing it as “a world built on interdependence – and sustained by a dense web of economic, political, social and technological connections”, he said it would allow multiple centres of influence to coexist within a common framework of international law and shared rules. Such a world, he said, could help prevent hegemonic tendencies and avoid the “Great Fracture: The division of the world into two rival blocs with separate economic, technological and security systems.”

Guterres said a networked world recognised that no country could solve today’s challenges alone. “Of course, competition will remain a permanent feature of international relations. But competition does not mean confrontation,” he said. He added that healthy competition could drive innovation, build resilience and widen opportunity, but said this future required a realistic view of power, especially among superpowers. “Their power has limits. The events of recent years have made that unmistakably clear. Military power alone cannot secure peace. Economic power alone cannot command stability. And technological power alone cannot guarantee security.”

Closing his argument, Guterres said a networked multipolar world could create the conditions for more balanced and representative global problem-solving, but only if the multilateral system centred on the UN became more balanced and representative as well. He said the world needed strong and effective institutions that reflected today’s realities and the changing weight of countries and economies, “not the power arrangements of 80 years ago”.