Secretary-General António Guterres delivers his special address on climate action from the American Museum of Natural History in New York on June 5, 2024. United Nations
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called for immediate action to avoid the world being in “climate hell” after this May was the warmest ever recorded, according to a recent report from the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
“It’s climate crunch time,” Guterres said at New York’s American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday, as UN News reported. “We stand at a moment of truth.”
Guterres emphasized that, though the need for measures to combat the climate crisis globally is at an all-time high, so are the occasions for sustainable development and economic prosperity.
“In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger, we are the danger. But, we are also the solution,” Guterres said.
The UN chief cited C3S in saying emissions worldwide must be reduced by nine percent annually to maintain the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit established in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Global emissions increased by one percent last year.
On Wednesday, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization said the temperature threshold has an 80 percent likelihood of being surpassed within the next five years.
“We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” Guterres said, as reported by UN News. “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell, and the truth is we have control of the wheel.”
Palestinian children injured in Israeli attacks on Al-Maghazi refugee camp are brought to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 5, 2023. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency)
“It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,” said one Palestinian observer.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres informed Israel on Friday that, for the first time, it is being added to the so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts, a decision that infuriated Israeli officials but was welcomed by human rights defenders as long overdue.
The Secretary-General Office’s annual Children and Armed Conflict report—which is likely to be released publicly later this month—has included countries and militant groups such as Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Iraq, Islamic State, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. This is believed to be the first time the list has included a nation hailed by Western governments as a democracy.
“It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,” Palestinian political analyst Nour Odeh said on social media. “Arms embargo NOW!”
Israel to be listed on the UNSG's list of shame of armed forces & groups committing grave violations of children's rights.
Historic, but so, so late. So many Palestinian children might still be alive if world leaders had the courage to speak up earlier. https://t.co/mvvKywwO3o
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “the U.N. has put itself on the blacklist of history today when it joined the supporters of the Hamas murderers.”
“The IDF is the most moral army in the world and no delusional decision by the U.N. will change that,” added the prime minister, who International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking to arrest along with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes including extermination.
This year’s 2024 List of Shame will also include Hamas, which led the October 7 attack that left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead, including 38 children. Around 30 minors were also kidnapped by Hamas, all of whom are believed to have been freed. Khan wants to arrest three leaders of Hamas, whose members are accused of extermination, rape, and other crimes.
In retaliation, Israel launched an assault and siege on theGaza Strip—now on its 244th day—killing more than 36,700 Palestinians including at least 15,000 minors, according to Palestinian and international agencies. Some children have allegedly been sexually abused and executedby Israeli troops.
More children were killed in Gaza in the first four months of the war than in four years of conflict worldwide, in what Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, called a “war on children… their childhood, and their future.”
There are also tens of thousands of children among the more than 83,000 Palestinians wounded by Israeli bombs and bullets in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment and invasion, but there’s no safe place for them to go.
The Israeli blockade of Gaza and obliteration of its healthcare infrastructure have exacerbated what the U.N.’s top food official has called a “full-blown famine” in the north and widespread starvation throughout the strip. Dozens of children have starved to death.
Israel’s conduct in the war is under investigation by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in a genocide case brought by South Africa and supported by more than 30 other nations and regional blocs.
The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) calls Gaza the most dangerous place in the world for children. The perils are not only physical; the annihilation of Gaza has also wrought tremendous psychological damage upon its children, many of whom have survived multiple Israeli campaigns.
According to UNICEF, more than 17,000 Gazan children are now orphans, with some having lost their entire families to Israeli attacks. International medical workers have coined a new acronym for these children: WCNSF, or, wounded child, no surviving family.
The UN has a “List of Shame” to publicly names those who harm children in war
After more than 15,000 children have been murdered in Gaza 🇵🇸, Israel 🇮🇱 has been put on that ‘shame list’
Between 2000 and the start of the Gaza war, Israeli forces killed more than 2,300 children throughout Palestine, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine. Prior to the current war, the highest number of Palestinian children killed in one year was 546 in 2014, when Israel carried out its Operation Protective Edge invasion of Gaza.
Despite all this killing, Israel was perennially given a pass from the List of Shame.
“Including Israel in the List of Shame is an urgent necessity to put an end to its severe and horrific violations and to protect the rights of Palestinian children. It is also crucial for maintaining the integrity and credibility of U.N. mechanisms, which are at risk of erosion due to double standards,” said Radhya Al-Mutawakel, who heads the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights.
Al-Mutawakel asserted that blacklisting Israel sends “a clear message that the U.N. stands firmly for the protection of children’s rights worldwide and will not tolerate violations against them” and also conveys “that the U.N. deals uniformly with all parties involved in grave violations against children, regardless of the perpetrators’ identities or the children’s backgrounds.”
Numerous Palestine advocates said Israel’s inclusion on the list of shame underscores the urgency of halting shipments of weapons used to kill Palestinian children.
“Israel is a terrorist nation,” said British union leader Howard Beckett. “Arms embargo. Sanctions. Hague.”
An aerial photography taken October 10, 2023 shows a neighborhood of Gaza City destroyed by Israeli bombardment. (Photo: Al Araby/Wikimedia Commons)
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his call for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Peace and human rights advocates on Sunday renewed calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an increase in lifesaving humanitarian aid for its starving people as the embattled enclave marked six months since the start of Israel’s genocidal retaliation for the October 7 attacks.
In six months of bombardment by air, land, and sea following the Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,100 people in Israel—with over 240 people taken hostage—Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 116,000 Palestinians, including people believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings. Gazans—especially children—are starving to death as Israel severely restricts the amount of aid allowed to enter the strip. Women are “burying their newborns every day” as they have nothing to feed them.
Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, perhaps permanently, in what many Palestinians and international observers are calling a new Nakba, the ethnic cleansing catastrophe perpetrated by Jewish militants during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Gaza’s infrastructure has been obliterated, with reconstruction expected to cost $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.
“Over the last six months, the Israeli military campaign has brought relentless death and destruction to Palestinians in Gaza—with more than 32,000 people reportedly killed and more than 75,000 injured—the vast majority women and children,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said during a press conference marking six months of a war in which the International Court of Justice has found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.
"6 months on, we are at the brink of mass starvation, of regional conflagration, of a total loss of faith in global standards & norms."
“During my visit to the Rafah crossing 10 days ago, I met veteran humanitarians who told me categorically that the crisis and suffering in Gaza is unlike any they have ever seen,” Guterres continued. “Meanwhile—as I saw on my way to the Rafah crossing—long lines of trucks loaded with humanitarian aid continued to face obstacle after obstacle.”
“When the gates to aid are closed, the doors to starvation are opened,” he said. “More than half the population—over a million people—are facing catastrophic hunger. Children in Gaza today are dying for lack of food and water. This is incomprehensible, and entirely avoidable. Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Guterres noted the 196 humanitarian aid workers—including more than 175 U.N. personnel and members of Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Crescent, World Central Kitchen, and other organizations—who have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets over the past six months.
“I repeat my urgent appeals for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid,” Guterres said.
Demonstrators took to the streets of cities around the world to condemn Israel’s genocide and demand an immediate cease-fire.
Māori folx performing the Haka at the Free Palestine rally in Naarm/Melbourne.
6 months on the streets marching for an end to the genocidal assault on Gaza and for a Free Palestine.
Land back, liberation End colonial occupation From this continent to Aotearoa to Palestine pic.twitter.com/UQniMrZ9LX
There were also protests in cities including Tel Aviv and New York calling for the release of all Israelis and others held hostage in Gaza. New York rabbi Ellen Lippman said she wouldn’t be attending the rally because she “cannot call for the release of the hostages without an explicit demand for an immediate cease-fire and an end to the Israeli assault on Gaza.”
Left-wing Israelis held vigils outside the U.S. embassies in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Friday to demand an end to Washington’s military and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocide.
“The United States supplies the guns, and Israel pulls the trigger,” organizer Erez Bleicher told the crowd.
Today marks six months of Israel's genocide in Gaza.
With US support, over a hundred thousand Palestinians have been killed, kidnapped, tortured, or injured. Over a million are at risk of starving to death.
President Joe Biden in recent days has urged an immediate cease-fire, even as the U.S. continues to provide the bulk of Israel’s weapons. In a Thursday call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said in a statement. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”
Israel responded by saying it would temporarily allow more aid to enter Gaza.
Residents watch the McDougall Creek wildfire in West Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, on August 17, 2023 from Kelowna. (Photo: Darren Hull/AFP via Getty Images)
“Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.
Last year broke records for several key climate indicators, including surface temperatures, ocean heat, sea-level rise, and the loss of Antarctic sea ice, the World Meteorological Organization found in its State of the Global Climate 2023 report, released Tuesday.
The agency confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year on record and said it gave an “ominous” new meaning to the phrase “off the charts.”
“Earth is issuing a distress call,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video statement. “The latest State of the Global Climate report shows a planet on the brink. Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts. Sirens are blaring across all major indicators.”
“The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis.”
2023 saw an average global near-surface temperature of 1.45°C, the report found, making 2023 the hottest on record and the cap on the warmest 10-year period on record.
“Never have we been so close—albeit on a temporary basis at the moment—to the 1.5°C lower limit of the Paris agreement on climate change,” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. “The WMO community is sounding the red alert to the world.”
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts had found separately that January 2024 capped a 12-month period that exceeded the 1.5°C target for the first time.
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) March 19, 2024
2023 was also a particularly alarming year for ocean heat, with nearly a third of the ocean in the midst of a marine heatwave at any time during the year. Global sea-surface temperatures reached record heights for April and every month after, with July, August, and September especially hot. Ocean heat content also broke records, and more than 90% of the ocean experienced a heatwave for at least a portion of the year.
The world’s glaciers and sea ice did not fare any better. Glaciers lost the most ice in any year since record-keeping began in 1950, and Antarctica’s sea-ice extent at the end of winter smashed the previous record by 1 million square kilometers.
“Because of burning fossil fuels, which leads to CO2-induced global heating, we have impacted the polar regions to such a degree that 2023 saw by far the greatest loss of sea ice in the Antarctic and of land ice in Greenland,” University of Exeter polar expert Martin Siegert told Common Dreams. “The world will feel the detrimental effects now and into the future because the changes observed will lead to ‘feedback’ processes encouraging further change.”
“Our only response must be to stop burning fossil fuels so that the damage can be limited,” Siegert added. “That is our best and only option.”
2023 also saw record sea-level rise and ocean acidification.
“Climate change is about much more than temperatures,” Saulo said. “What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat, and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern.”
Records were broken too for the main cause of all this warming and melting—the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide all reached record levels in 2022, and data indicates that the atmospheric concentrations of all three continued to rise in 2023, with carbon dioxide levels 50% higher than before the industrial revolution.
The report also considered the impacts of global heating on extreme weather events: 2023 saw several especially devastating climate-fueled disasters, including lethal flooding from Cyclone Daniel in Libya; Tropical Cyclone Mocha, which displaced 1.7 million people in the region around the Bay of Bengal; an extreme heatwave in southern Europe and North Africa; a record wildfire season in Canada that smothered several North American cities in heavy smoke; and the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than 100 years in Hawaii.
In addition to claiming lives and forcing people from their homes, these disasters have several other impacts on peoples’ well-being. For example, the report noted that the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity had shot up to 333 million in 2023, more than two times the 149 million before the pandemic. While the root causes of this are war and conflict, economic downturns, and high food prices, extreme weather events can make the situation worse. When Cyclone Freddy, one of the longest-lasting cyclones ever, struck Madagascar, Mozambique, and Malawi in February, it flooded vast swaths of agricultural fields and damaged crops in other ways.
“The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis—as witnessed by growing food insecurity and population displacement, and biodiversity loss,” Saulo said.
Guterres, meanwhile, said the impact of extreme weather on sustainable development was “devastating.”
“Every fraction of a degree of global heating impacts the future of life on Earth,” he said.
There was some positive news in the report, mainly that renewable energy increased new capacity by nearly 50% in 2023 compared with 2022, the highest rate of increase in 20 years. Global climate finance nearly doubled from 2019-2020 to almost $1.3 trillion, but this was still only 1% of global gross domestic product.
To have a shot at limiting warming to 1.5°C, finance needs to increase by nearly $9 trillion by 2030 and another $10 trillion by 2050, but this is much lower than the estimated cost of doing nothing, which would be $1,266 trillion from 2025-2100, though the WMO said this was likely a “dramatic underestimate.”
Guterres said it was still possible to limit long-term global temperature rise to 1.5°C, but it required swift action; leadership from the G20 nations toward a just energy transition; countries proposing 1.5°C-compliant climate plans by 2025; increased climate finance flows toward the developing world, including for adaptation and Loss and Damage; universal coverage by early warning systems by 2027; and “accelerating the inevitable end of the fossil fuel age.”
“There’s still time to throw out a lifeline to people and planet,” Guterres said, “but leaders must step up and act now.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at the opening of the 55th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on February 26, 2024. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
“Today’s warmongers cannot erase the clear lesson of the past,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “Protecting human rights protects us all.”
The head of the United Nations said Monday that countries and groups involved in wars around the world are “turning a blind eye to international law” and imperiling the lives of millions of innocent people, including many children.
“The rule of law, and the rules of war, are being undermined,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in remarks to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Guterres pointed specifically to conflicts raging in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan and lamented that the U.N. Security Council has frequently been “deadlocked” in the face of mass atrocities, “unable to act on the most significant peace and security issues of our time.”
“The council’s lack of unity on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and on Israel’s military operations in Gaza following the horrific terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October, has severely—perhaps fatally—undermined its authority,” said Guterres, who delivered his address less than a week after the U.S. used its veto power for the third time since October 7 to tank a Gaza cease-fire resolution at the U.N. Security Council.
“Flouting international law only feeds insecurity and results in more bloodshed.”
Guterres’ speech marked the start of the Human Rights Council’s first high-level session of 2024. The U.N. chief said at the session that the world “urgently” needs a “new commitment to all human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political, and social—as they apply to peace and security, backed by serious efforts at implementation and accountability.”
Toward that end, Guterres announced the launch of a “systemwide United Nations Agenda for Protection” under which U.N. bodies “will act as one to prevent human rights violations, and to identify and respond to them when they take place.”
“Flouting international law only feeds insecurity and results in more bloodshed,” Guterres warned. “Human rights conventions and humanitarian law are based on cold, hard reality: They recognize that terrorizing civilians and depriving them of food, water, and healthcare is a recipe for endless anger, alienation, extremism, and conflict.”
“Today’s warmongers cannot erase the clear lesson of the past,” he added. “Protecting human rights protects us all.”
Around the world, violence is increasing.
We must not become numb to appalling & repeated violations of international humanitarian & human rights law.
Violations by one party don't absolve the other from compliance.
Guterres’ address came after Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in separate analyses published Monday that Israel is blatantly disregarding an interim ruling handed down last month by the U.N.’s highest legal body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Israeli forces have killed more than 3,400 people in Gaza since the ICJ’s January 26 ruling, and nearly 30,000 total since their assault on the Palestinian enclave began following a deadly Hamas-led attack on October 7.
“Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying a callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said places them at imminent risk of genocide,” Heba Morayef, Amnesty’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
“Time and time again,” Morayef added, “Israel has failed to take the bare minimum steps humanitarians have desperately pleaded for that are clearly within its power to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
In his remarks Monday, Guterres warned that an Israeli ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah “would not only be terrifying for more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there; it would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programs.”
“International humanitarian law remains under attack. Tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in Gaza,” said Guterres. “I repeat my call for a humanitarian cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
