 Your Majesty, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, it's an honor to again, I'm privileged to again be able to welcome you back to Davos, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. We are all very grateful, Mr. Secretary-General, that despite all the challenges you continue to stand up for the UN Charter, international law, and also the humanitarian principles. We are also very much looking forward to your summit of the future in September and you can count on us also for our full support. We know that these are very challenging times. We are having this annual meeting against the most complicated geopolitical backdrop in decades. And we also know that we're lagging behind when it comes to reaching the sustainable development goals by 2030. Mr. Secretary-General, at the beginning of this year, I invite you to share with us again your assessment of the state of the world. Please welcome the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your warm welcome, and it's good to be back, to be back and to see Davos enlightening the global crisis in trust. I believe this crisis is the direct result of the paradox facing our world. In the face of the series, even existential threats posed by runaway climate chaos and the development, the runaway development of artificial intelligence without guardrails, we seem powerless to act together. As climate breakdown begins, countries remain ill-bent on raising emissions. Our planet is still having, for a scorching, three-degree increase in global temperatures. Droughts, storms, fires and floods are pummeling countries and communities. Before traveling to the United Nations climate talks in COP28 in Dubai, I saw for myself the dramatic receding of Himalayan glaciers and the accelerated melting of the ice sheet in Antarctica. And here in Switzerland, glaciers are disappearing before our eyes. Some are gone forever, and others have lost 10 percent of their volume in just the past two years. Such rapid changes should disturb us all. 2023 went down as the hottest year on record, but it could be one of the coolest years on the future. The media has recently reported that US fossil fuel industry has launched yet another multi-million dollar campaign to kneecap progress and keep the oil and gas flowing indefinitely. Let me be very clear again, the phase out of fossil fuels is essential and inevitable. No amount of spin or skirt tactics will change that. Let's hope it doesn't come too late. But we must now act to ensure a just and equitable transition to renewable energy. At the same time, every new interaction of generative AI increases the risk of series unintended consequences. The technology has enormous potential for sustainable development, but as the International Monetary Fund has just warned us, it is very likely it will worsen inequality in the world. And some powerful tech companies are already pursuing profits with a clear disregard for human rights, personal privacy and social impact. This is no secret. Now, these two issues, climate and AI, are exhaustively discussed by governments, by the media and by leaders here in Davos. And yet, we have not yet an effective global strategy to deal with either. And the reason is simple. Geopolitical divides are preventing us from coming together around global solutions for global challenges. Little wonder that people everywhere are losing face in governments, institutions and financial and economic systems. Dear friends, at times of existential peril in the past, the world was able to come together to mitigate risks. Even during the Cold War, the world faced terrible regional conflicts, moments of great danger, but there were systems in place to promote predictability, including initiatives on arms control and nuclear hotlines. Today, many of these systems have been eroded or undermined. Instead of nuclear disarmament, there is talk of nuclear rearmament, and states are spending billions making their nuclear arsenals faster, stealthier and more accurate. The Cold War, a nearer of two superpowers, was followed by a brief period of unipolarity. But now, some analysts predict we are moving into a totally chaotic situation in which geopolitical divides at all levels prevent any global response to global threats. But I strongly believe it is possible to prevent this disastrous scenario. I am confident we can build a new multipolar global order with new opportunities for leadership and with balance and justice in international relations. But multipolarity creates complexity. Left to itself, it could deepen fault lines between north and south, east and west, developed and developing economies, within the G20, and between the G20 and everyone else. And the only way to manage this complexity and avoid a slide into chaos is through a reformed, inclusive, networked multilateralism. Now, these require strong multilateral institutions and frameworks and effective mechanisms of global governance. Without them, further fragmentation is inevitable, and the consequences are clear. We see an epidemic of impunity around the world. We see some countries doing whatever it takes to further their own interests at all costs, from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Sudan, more recently Gaza. Parties to conflict are ignoring international law, trampling on the Geneva Conventions, and even violating the United Nations Charter. The world is standing by as civilians, mostly women and children, are killed, maimed, bombarded, forced from their homes, and denied access to humanitarian aid. I repeat my call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and the process that leads to sustained peace for Israelis and Palestinians based on a two-state solution that is the only way to stem the suffering and prevent a spillover that could send the entire region up in flames. And I also call for a just peace in Ukraine, a peace in accordance with the United Nations Charter, a peace in accordance with international law. Dear friends, geopolitical divisions are a major risk factor affecting our faltering global economy. Political instability is adding to economic insecurity. Meanwhile, inequality and injustice are reaching obscene levels, a serious obstacle to sustainable development. Oxfam reports that the world's five richest men, and they are men, have more than doubled their fortunes since 2020 at a rate of 14 million US dollars per hour. At the same time, more than half the world, nearly five billion people, have become poorer. The World Bank warns we are heading towards the worst half decade for growth in 30 years, and many of the some countries bettered by climate chaos are in a financial shockhold. More than half the world's poorest 75 countries face debt distress. Their interest payments have quadrupled in recent years. After decades of reductions in poverty and hunger, progress has slowed, and in some countries gone into reverse. And this is fooling, resentment and anger. Dear friends, when global norms collapse, so does trust. And I'm personally shocked by the systematic undermining of principles and standards we used to take for granted. I'm outraged that so many countries and companies are pursuing their own narrow interests without any consideration for our shared future or our common goals. And I'm certain that unless we take action, we can expect much, much worse. So let's be clear. Rebuilding trust is not a slogan or a PR campaign. It requires deep reforms to global governance to manage geopolitical tensions during a new era of multipolarity. And it is essential to building a safer, more stable and prosperous world. So dear friends, the institutions and frameworks of global governance, from the Security Council to the Bretton Woods system, were created 80 years ago. We can't build a future for our grandchildren with a system built for our grandparents. The United Nations is fully engaged this year in efforts to bring them up to date, rooted in equality and solidarity based on the UN Charter and international law. In September, we will host the Summit of the Future focused on solutions. And the summit will consider essential reforms to the global financial architecture to make it responsive to today's challenges and representative of today's world. Countries in the global south, they were at their colonial rule when the system was created and so they have today a minimal weight. Reforms to the Security Council and the proposed new agenda for peace would also help to prevent and resolve conflict, rebalance geopolitical relations and give developing countries a proportionate voice on the global stage. And the global digital compact can turbocharge DSDGs and help to close the digital connectivity gap, share data and build digital public goods. The private sector is in the lead on AI expertise and resources. And you need the private sector's full engagement in our multi-stakeholder effort to develop a governance model that is networked and adapted. I believe the UN should play a central convening role. The advisory board I created on artificial intelligence has already made preliminary recommendations on AI governance that tap the benefits of this incredible new technology while mitigating its risks. And we need governments urgently to work with tech companies on risk management frameworks for current AI development and on monitoring and mitigating future harms. And we need systematic effort to increase access to AI so that developing economies can benefit from its enormous potential. We need to bridge the digital divide instead of deepening it. Rebuilding trust will not happen overnight. But I am convinced that it is most essential and possible. And I urge everybody, I urge you to influence, to prevent further damage and to get our world back on track, to safety, to prosperity and peace. And I thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary General. And thank you for also underlining the importance of rebuilding trust. In many ways, we are in a geopolitical recession, but not yet in a geopolitical depression. There are fine lines there, though, but you also underline that you still think there is possibilities when it comes to rebuilding trust. And if you look at it as a glass half full and not half empty, there have been some areas that even in this polarized world there has been possibilities for collaboration. I think COP28 was one. Is there, for example, opportunities to establish some traffic rules around AI? You have no big advisory panel on this, and you have the future of our planet, the future summit coming up in September. So looking at this, where are the areas you still think short term, medium term, there is a possibility for collaboration even in this polarized world? Well, first of all, we are in a particularly difficult moment of geopolitical divide when looking to peace and security. I would say before the COVID, we had divides among the P5, but those divides were not a threat to global peace and security. They would make it difficult to solve crises here and there in different parts of the world. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and with the present situation in the Middle East, the P5 are deeply involved in situations that really correspond to serious risks to global peace and security. And this is an area where I do not see much easy progress before we solve these two problems. And in my opinion, we must solve the Ukraine-Russia problem with full respect to the UN Charter and to international law. And in my opinion, we need to solve the Israeli-Palestinian question with the possibility to take this problem and make it an opportunity for the two-state solution to be finally something credible and something that can mobilize the two communities to live together in peace and security. So I am not optimistic about immediate impacts on peace and security. But I think that a lot can be done on the economy, a lot can be done on climate, and a lot can be done on technology. But for that to be possible, I believe we need a very serious negotiation between developed countries and the emerging economies. Some people say it's between the US and China. I think that is too simplistic. The US doesn't represent the whole of the developed world. Europe and the US have different positions on several issues. And China doesn't represent India, Indonesia and several other countries. But the truth is that we live in an economic system that was designed after the Second World War and basically designed by the developed countries. And we see the emerging economies with a bigger and bigger weight in the global economy, but not a similar weight in the institutions that rule the global economy. So there is an area of reform in which this discussion is essential. And there is a serious negotiation on trade, on climate, and on technology that these two blocks need to be able to establish. The UN is a platform for that. The G20 is another platform for that. There was some progress in the last G20 on some aspects of reform of multilateral development banks, but we need to go much further. And we need to use the G20 and we need to use the summit of the future to look more seriously into how in these aspects, global economic governance, technology, and especially AI and climate, the emerging economies and the developed countries that still have in many aspects contradictory interests can effectively come together in compromise. And we will be supporting it as much as we can. And the other area that is essential is, I mean, yesterday, Rebecca Grinspan in another meeting was saying that we have the rich, the big, and the rest of the world. We need to create the level of reforms and the level of mechanisms to support those countries. And they are the majority of the developing countries, normally of smaller dimension, that are drowning in debt, that have no chance to recover from the COVID and from the impacts of the invasion of Ukraine, invasion to prices, high interest rates, that are in a very dramatic situation and able to implement the sustainable development goals. And there, I think, a lot needs to be done. Some progress was made in the G20, as there was progress in relation to climate in the COP, but a lot needs to be done in order to allow our international financial system to be able to multiply the resources available for those countries. And at the same time, to support the improvements of governance, the capacity for those countries to define strategies and projects that are bankable, and that allow them to overcome the present difficulties. So I think we need a serious negotiation between developed countries and the emerging economies, and we need a serious set of reforms to allow for the international system to give a chance for those developing countries that are excluded, basically, from the progress of the global economy, to be able to catch up. Thank you. You said in your speech that I'm personally shocked by the systematic undermining of principles and standards we used to take for granted. I guess you're also then referring to the period that we call the post Cold War period, where my main countries mainly were sticking to these principles. That period is no pause. We are between orders. We had that order, and we are embarking into a new order. How to avoid that the new order is like the jungle growing back? Are you worried about that, or are you convinced that the principles of reforms of the multilateral system, and that we build a more inclusive order, also build on the main principles UN Charter and National Law, is possible? You said, if I remember right in your speech to the General Assembly in September, you said something to the effect that multipolarity is fine, but multipolarity without multilateralism and international law is not a good idea, and we tried that in Europe 150 years ago. We are no longer in the bipolar world, and we are no longer in unipolar world. I lived both. Bipolar when I was a young politician, the unipolar world when I was prime minister, so I lived in the very center of the events. This is no longer the case. But the question is, it's not yet clear what kind of world will it be. I do believe multipolarity is a positive thing. To have a world in which we have the United States, you have the European Union, you have Japan, you have China, you have India, you have Brazil, you have the African Union. I mean, this is something that in my opinion creates the conditions for equilibrium and for opportunities for all. But it is also true that when multipolarity is not accompanied by multilateral governance mechanisms, the contradictions within a multipolar world multiply the chances of conflict. And that is the risk we are facing at the present moment. And there is one thing that is very interesting. I mean, with the lack of influence that the P5 members, the permanent members of the Security Council, today have much less influence, with the exception of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that was a direct intervention of one of them. But if you don't take that into account, if you look at what's happening in different other parts of the world, you have to recognize that today you have medium-sized powers that have more influence in what's happening than the big powers. Countries like Israel, Iran, Turkey have proven to be much more influenced in the crises that I have to manage in the recent past than the P5 members of the Security Council that fight for weeks and weeks to get the text in which they can agree on something. But in the end, the influence on the reality in the ground is much smaller than the influence of those mid-sized powers. And this is creating an environment of a certain impunity, an environment in which everybody thinks they can do whatever they want. And this is the problem of the principles that are forgotten. I mean, the charter must be respected. International law must be respected. And today there is total impunity in relation to violations of the charter to violations of international law. The norms that are necessary to regulate economic systems must be respected. And today we see the trend to forget about those norms or to put them into question. And I think that an essential component of building trust is exactly to make sure that with the reforms that are needed for the institutions to be truly representative, which is not yet the case, do those reforms, but at the same time make sure that you create the instruments of the accountability for law to be respected, the charter to be respected, norms to be respected, predictability to exist in international relations. I think that this is not going to be easy. No, but I think it deserves an applause. You said, Mr. Secretary General, that international law has to be the basis for peace in Ukraine. And you also said that to really move forward on peace and reconciliation, one has to solve Ukraine and then Gaza. Those impulses have to be broken. But let's deal with Ukraine first. Is there any chance that international law and respect for territorial integrity will be applied anytime soon in Ukraine? And you visited Kiev and you visited Moscow, and you see how difficult this is. If we start to accept that the territorial integrity of countries is expendable, we will create chaos in the world. There are so many countries around the world that have potential revendications about territory of other countries. There are so many situations where minorities can at a certain moment claim that they should belong to another country. It's absolutely essential that the principle of the territorial integrity of states is respected. Of course, we know that states are not perfect. History has been what it has been. It took centuries in Europe to create the borders that we have now. But I think those that led the African emergence were wise when they said that it was essential to respect the borders. Even if the borders had been drawn by colonialism, those borders were not corresponding to the reality of the societies as they were. But the moment that we start thinking that we can change, redesign, we are in deep trouble. So I see that to reaffirm the principle of territorial integrity of Ukraine and of any other country is essential. This is not going to be easy. No. The situation is difficult. It is. But principles are something we need to preserve in all situations. I know you're speaking at another event in five minutes, but I also mentioned Gaza. You mentioned also a two-state solution. Is there, based on the humanitarian catastrophe we're seeing unfolding now in Gaza, do you possibly see some new momentum coming out of this for a two-state solution also in a regional context? We know there is an Arab peace plan that also will guarantee recognition of Israel from all the Arab states and their security. But here, I think there is a lot of obstacles also down the road. Well, let's be clear. We have a part of the world. We have with a few million of Israelis and a few million of Palestinians. They cannot liquidate each other. They need to be able to live together in that territory. And I think that the progressive relaxation of the interest of the international community led to a situation in which hope started to be lost. What has happened was horrible. Horrible, first of all, the barbaric attacks of Hamas. Horrible what's happening now in Gaza. But this shows that something drastic needs to be done to make sure that these two communities can live together. And the only way for these two communities to live together in peace and security is if each one of them has a stand. So I believe that the present situation has demonstrated that the two-state solution is an absolutely essential way to solve this problem and an absolutely essential way to preserve a minimum of peace and stability in the region. The spillover that is already taking place. The risk of a full-fledged confrontation in Lebanon. It would be a total disaster. We need to avoid it at all costs. What we are seeing in the Red Sea, all these demonstrates that it's not enough. It's very important to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza. It's very important to have human tendencies fired as we defend. It's very important to release the hostage. It's very important to solve all these problems. But we need to find once and for all a total commitment of the international community for a two-state solution to exist in Israel and Palestine as the basis for a stable and peaceful Middle East for the benefit of everybody. Big thank you to the Secretary General. Thank you for joining us again. Thank you for your speech. And thank you for, I think, of course, I am biased, but for this incredibly interesting discussion and conversation with you. Thank you.