UN Secretary-General Decries Global Rise of ‘Rule of Force’ over Law

‘Do Not Let the Powerful Have No Limits,’ Antonio Guterres Cautions

GENEVA: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Monday that “the rule of force” was spreading, as the powerful trample on international law and wield artificial intelligence and other technologies to attack human rights.

“Human rights are under a full-scale attack around the world,” Antonio Guterres told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s annual session in Geneva. “The rule of law is being outmuscled by the rule of force.” The UN secretary-general stressed that “this assault is not coming from the shadows, or by surprise. It is happening in plain sight – and often led by those who hold the greatest power”.

He did not mention specific situations, although he did voice outrage at Russia’s war in Ukraine, where he said more than 15,000 civilians had been killed in four years of violence. “It is more than past time to end the bloodshed,” he said.

Guterres also highlighted the “blatant violations of human rights, human dignity and international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. He charged that the trajectory in the conflict-torn territories under Israeli occupation was “stark, clear and purposeful: the two-state solution is being stripped away in broad daylight”.
“The international community cannot allow it to happen,” he insisted. In his final in-person address to the UN’s top rights body, Guterres said the worst conflict-hit areas were not the only places where rights were eroding.

“Around the world, human rights are being pushed back deliberately, strategically and sometimes proudly,” he said. “We are living in a world where mass suffering is excused away, where humans are used as bargaining chips, where international law is treated as a mere inconvenience.”

“When human rights fall, everything else tumbles,” Guterres warned. The crisis of respect for human rights “mirrors and magnifies every other global fracture”, he said, pointing out that “inequalities are widening at staggering speed.

At the same time, “climate chaos is accelerating, and technology, especially artificial intelligence, is increasingly being used in ways that suppress rights, deepen inequality and expose marginalised people to new forms of discrimination both online and offline”, he warned. What is clear, Guterres warned, was that “across every front, those who are already vulnerable are being pushed further to the margins”.

“Democracies eroding… migrants harassed, arrested and expelled with total disregard for their human rights and their humanity. Refugees scapegoated,” he pointed out.
Guterres, who is to step down this year after a decade at the UN helm, called for urgent action to reverse the trend. “Do not let power write a new rulebook in which the vulnerable have no rights and the powerful have no limits,” he said.