<\/p>\n
18 September 2024<\/p>\n
Following is the transcript of UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\u2019 press conference in New York today:<\/p>\n
Good morning.<\/p>\n
We are just days away from The Summit of The Future and the opening of the general debate.<\/p>\n
Discussions on the outcome of the Summit are in the final stretch.<\/p>\n
I will not go into the details, but I have one overriding message today:\u00a0 an appeal to Member States for a spirit of compromise.<\/p>\n
Show the world what we can do, when we work together.<\/p>\n
Why is this so critical?<\/p>\n
The Summit of The Future was born out of a cold, hard fact:\u00a0international challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.\u00a0 We see out-of-control geopolitical divisions and runaway conflicts \u2014 not least in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond.<\/p>\n
\/…<\/p>\n
\/…<\/p>\n
Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Hello, Secretary-General.\u00a0 How are you?\u00a0 Gabriel Elizondo from Al Jazeera English.\u00a0 Thank you for the briefing.\u00a0 I want to ask you about the UN agencies and their health right now, particularly, as you know, UNRWA (Â鶹APP Relief and Works Agency), for example, under incredible strain with more than 200 staff members that have been killed in Israel\u2019s continued war on Gaza.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not only UNRWA in Gaza.\u00a0 It\u2019s World Food Programme (WFP), other agencies in Africa and Sudan not getting the funding that they need, get under pressure from host Governments, also dealing with political pressures from the Security Council.\u00a0 How do you ascertain the health of UN agencies as a whole, and what more can be done to bolster their effectiveness in the life-saving work that they do around the world?<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>Well the UN agencies are healthy.\u00a0 They need to be properly funded, but they are healthy.\u00a0 They are doing the job.\u00a0 They are working in a very effective way, and I\u2019m proud of the work that our agencies and their staff is doing everywhere.<\/p>\n Of course, we quoted the very specific situation that has nothing to do with funding.\u00a0 When we have around 200\u00a0members of the staff of not only UNRWA, but also other agencies that are killed in a war context, this is absolutely intolerable, and this is something that requires effective accountability.\u00a0 So, we need, first of all, international humanitarian law to be respected in all conflicts, humanitarian workers to be protected in our world in all conflicts, UN and non-UN humanitarian workers.\u00a0 And we need the humanitarian funding to be able to follow the dramatic increase in the needs because of the dramatic multiplication of conflicts and the dramatic impact of climate change that is accelerating in a very dangerous way.<\/p>\n So, what we see now is not that there was a meaningful decrease in the humanitarian funding, even if there are some negative signals in the horizon.\u00a0 The problem is that the humanitarian funding did not follow the dramatic multiplication of the needs, which makes many of our humanitarian operations be in an extremely, extremely difficult situation to be able to respond to the dramatic problems of the populations they are in contact, because simply they have not enough resources to do so.<\/p>\n Spokesman:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Ibtisam, then Edie and Miriam.<\/p>\n Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Thank you, Mr.\u00a0Secretary-General, here in the middle.\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>Sorry, yes.<\/p>\n Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>My name is Ibtisam Azem,\u00a0Al-Araby Al-Jadeed<\/em>\u00a0newspaper.\u00a0 As you know, more than 41,000\u00a0Palestinians, the majority of whom are civilians, were killed in Gaza, and still weapons are being delivered to Israel.\u00a0 So, my question to you, do you believe that there should be weapon halt on delivery to Israel, and\/or weapon embargo?\u00a0 And what is your message to the Palestinians in general and the Palestinians in Gaza who feel that the world left them alone, being killed?<\/p>\n Thank you.<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>Well, I have no illusions about the possibility of what you are requesting.\u00a0 Knowing the world as it is today and knowing the decisions taken by the powers that are relevant, I have no illusions that that would be possible.\u00a0 And that makes the situation be what it is.\u00a0 And, obviously, there is something that needs to be underlined once more.\u00a0 It\u2019s that the level of death and destruction that we witness in Gaza is by far the largest that I\u2019ve ever seen in my mandate as Secretary-General and that the violations of international humanitarian law are totally unacceptable.\u00a0 I condemned as I did, and I feel that that condemnation was essential, the terror attacks by Hamas, but what\u2019s happening today in Gaza is totally unacceptable.\u00a0 And I follow with a lot of interest the work of the international courts in this regard.<\/p>\n Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Just a quick follow-up.\u00a0 You say you have your\u2026 not illusion, but you have a moral authority and a position on the issue of weapon delivery.\u00a0 So, you do\u2026 do you support it?\u00a0 Do you think it would be beneficial to stop the war immediately?<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>I think that that will not happen, and I\u2019m more concentrated on the things in which I believe we can make a change in the immediate\u2026<\/p>\n \/…<\/b><\/p>\n Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Oh, yeah.\u00a0 Senior Hamas officials have said recently that Hamas intends to maintain a dominant role in a post-war Gaza and that while Hamas is ready to work with the Palestinian Authority on civilian matters, Hamas\u2019s military wing and internal intelligence forces are off limits and would remain under Hamas\u2019s control.\u00a0 Given the UN\u2019s vision of a post-war Gaza under Palestinian Authority control, what is your view on whether Hamas\u2019 expressed intentions, to maintain its control post the war are an obstacle to peace, as well as Hamas\u2019 rejection of successive ceasefire proposals?<\/p>\n Thank you.<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>Our position is very clear.\u00a0 We hope that that will be an end to this horrible war, that finally there will be a ceasefire.\u00a0 And in our opinion, it is important that that ceasefire creates the conditions for a transition for the Palestinian Authority to assume authority in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and for that to be the basis for the construction of a two-State solution, a State of Palestine, the State of Palestine that, of course, will be ruled according to its own constitution and its own rules.\u00a0 But for us, there is a legitimate authority, which is the Palestinian Authority, and we believe that it\u2019s essential to have the Palestinian Authority, with a position of control both in Gaza and West Bank as a preparation for the two-State solution.<\/p>\n \/…<\/p>\n Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>[in Portuguese]\u00a0Muito obrigada, secret\u00e1rio-geral<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019ll switch back to English now because I know we don\u2019t have a Portuguese translator yet.\u00a0 This is Augusta Saraiva with Bloomberg News.\u00a0 I wanted to follow-up, on Valeria\u2019s question on your relationship with Israel.\u00a0 Right now, what do you think, what is necessary for the UN to man its relationship with Israel?\u00a0 And in practice, how much worse is the fact that there\u2019s no direct line between you and Prime Minister Netanyahu making things on the\u2026 how much harder is it making things on the ground for the UN?<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>There is a relationship between Israel and the UN.\u00a0 I have a special envoy in Jerusalem that is the UN authority, in contact with the government and the institutions of Israel.\u00a0 We have a country team in the occupied Palestinian territories that, of course, is in permanent contact with the Israeli authorities.\u00a0The Security Council has decided that there will be a special coordinator, and I appointed Sigrid Kaag, [who] is in permanent contact with Israel authorities.\u00a0 And, I myself have been in contact in different moments with several, high-ranking Israeli officers.\u00a0 So, the contact exists, the relationship exists.\u00a0 It is true that the action of the UN agencies, the humanitarian agencies, namely in Gaza, has suffered a systematic set of obstacles from the Israeli authorities.\u00a0 And it is also true that my position and the position of the Â鶹APP bodies in relation to what is happening in Gaza, independently of the condemnation that we made about the Hamas attack, is [that] what is happening in Gaza is unacceptable.<\/p>\n \/…<\/p>\n Question:\u00a0 <\/strong>Thank you, Mr.\u00a0Secretary-General, Abdelhamid Siyam from the Arabic daily\u00a0Al Quds Al Arabi<\/em>.\u00a0 Sir, in a few minutes, the GA will vote on a comprehensive resolution introduced by the Palestinian State, as you know.\u00a0 And this resolution is like a blueprint for ending occupation within 12\u00a0months.\u00a0 The resolution includes many instructions to you personally and to the UN and UN agencies to deal with Israel according to this resolution.\u00a0 Are you planning to cooperate?\u00a0 Would you put that record, in three months, how the UN will behave after this resolution, and what are you planning to deal with Israel according to that illegal occupation, illegal settlement must be evacuated and must end within 12\u00a0months.<\/p>\n Thank you.<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>First of all.\u00a0 We fully abide by the decisions of the International Court of Justice.\u00a0 We fully respect also and recognize the need for them to be respected by everybody the opinions issued by the International Court of Justice, and I will implement any decision of the General Assembly in that regard.<\/p>\n \/…<\/p>\n Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Secretary-General, I\u2019m Serife, Anadolu Agency.\u00a0 I have the urge to ask in Turkish, but I won\u2019t.\u00a0 Leave it to the future maybe.\u00a0 Please allow me to offer my condolences to all the UN workers that have been killed in Gaza.\u00a0 And as the number of casualties show, we can all see that the Â鶹APP is trying its best to alleviate the situation in Gaza and deliver aid.\u00a0 But as it has been mentioned before in this room as well, your voice is also your power.\u00a0 So, I want to know if you feel the international community is doing enough, and do you have a specific and concrete call for the Member States regarding Gaza?<\/p>\n Thank you.<\/p>\n Secretary-General:\u00a0<\/strong>Well, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s doing enough, and our call in relation to Gaza is to put pressure to stop the war as quickly as possible, and that has been our position since the beginning.\u00a0 But, I would like to say something about what you have mentioned.\u00a0 We insist that all humanitarian workers that are killed in a war situation should lead to a serious investigation and to effective accountability.\u00a0 If this is true everywhere, it is particularly true in Gaza, where the number of humanitarians killed is unparalleled.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never seen any other part of the world in which so many people were killed.\u00a0 And I think that if there is something the international community should be strongly committed is to put all pressure for that accountability to take place.<\/p>\n \/…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 18 September 2024 Following is the transcript of UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\u2019 press conference in New York today: Good morning. We are just days away from The Summit of The Future and the opening of the general debate. Discussions on the outcome of the Summit are in the final stretch. I will not go […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[2565,1699],"document-source":[5352],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2517,1769,2005,1741,1749],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-301480","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-briefing","document-category-press-conference","document-source-secretary-general","document-subject-access-and-movement","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-palestine-question","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/301480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/301480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301497,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/301480\/revisions\/301497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=301480"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=301480"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=301480"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=301480"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=301480"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=301480"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=301480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}